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50 Cents 


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165 


/ 

XovcU'e linternational Seriee 


The World, The Flesh 
and The Devil 

j • 

BY 

MISS M. E. BRADDON 

Author of “ Whose Was the Hand?” “Dead Men’s Shoes,” Etc. 


■sAuthoriied Edition 


NEW YORK 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

150 Worth Street, corner Mission Place 

Every work in this series is published by arrangement with the author. 


Issued Weekly. Annual Subscription, $15.00. June 2, 1891. 
Entered at New York Post Office as second-class matter. 


LOVELLS 

INTERNATIONAL SERIES 

OF 

MODERN NOVELS. 


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THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND 

THE DEVIL 





Xorell’s Unternational Scrtca, flo^ 165. 


ijj) 

THE WORLD, THE ELESH 
AND THE DEVIL 


MISS M/EyBRADDON 



AUTHOR OF 

“WHOSE WAS THE HAND?” “DEAD MEN’S SHOES,” ETC. 


r.QPYR/GHr 

i'L 6 189!' 



d/Jutboriied Edition 


NEW YORK 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

150 WORTH ST., COR. MISSION PLACE 


■^' 2 - 2 . 


Copyright, 1891, 

BY 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY. 




THE WORLD, THE FLESH, 
AND THE DEVIL. 


CHAPTER I. 


THE FATE READER. 



“ I look down to his feet, but that’s a fable.’' 

’ HERE were low brooding clouds and a feeling 
of thunder in the air as Gerard Hillersdon’s 
cab rattled along the King s Road, past all the 
squalor and shabby gentility of the side-scenes 
of Chelsea, towards quiet rural Parson’s Green. 
Only a few years ago Parson’s Green had still some 
pretensions to rusticity, and where now the specu- 
lating buildeis’ streets and terraces stretch right and left 
in hollow squares and close battalions, there were fine old 
Georgian and pre-Georgian mansions, and stately sweeps 
of lawn and shrubbery, and elms of old world growth, 
shutting out the hum and hubbub of the great city. 

To one of those old respectable mansions, that one which 
was second only to Peterborough House in the extent and 
dignity of its surroundings, Gerard Hillersdon was driv- 
ing under the heavy sky of a July afternoon, the lowering 
close of a sunless and oppressive day. Never, not even 
in mid-winter, had the smoke-curtain hung lower over 
London than it hung to-day, and if the idea of fog seemed 
impossible in July there at least prevailed that mysterious 


10 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


condition of the atmosphere, commonly known as ‘ blight/ 
a thick yellow haze, unpierced by a single sun-ray. 

To Gerard Hillersdon, ordinarily the most sensitive of 
men, the atmosphere on this particular afternoon made no 
difference. He had got beyond that point in which at- 
mosphere can raise a mans spirits or depress them. He 
had made up his mind upon a solemn question of life or 
death ; and this kind of day seemed as good to him as 
any other, since he meant it to be his last day upon earth. 
He had made up his mind that life and he must part com- 
pany ; that for him at least life was not worth living ; thus 
the grey and yellow of the atmosphere, and the darkly 
lowering thunder clouds to windward suited his temper 
far better than the blue sky and west wind which Lady 
Fridoline would have desired for her garden party. 

Incongruous as the thing may seem the young man was 
going to spend his last earthly afternoon at Lady Frido- 
line/s garden party ; but for a man utterly without re- 
ligious feeling or hope in the Hereafter such a finish to 
existence seemed as good as any other. He could not 
devote his last hours in preparing for the world that was 
to come after death, as he had no belief in any such world. 
To him the deed that was to be done before midnight 
meant swift, sudden extinction, the end of all things for 
him, Gerard Hillersdon. The curtain which was to fall 
upon the tragedy of his life to-night would rise upon no 
afterpiece. The only question which he had taken into 
serious consideration was the mode and manner of his 
death. He had made up his mind about that. His re- 
volver was lying in its case in his lodging-house bedroom, 
under the shadow of St. James* Church, ready loaded — a 
six-shooter. He had made no will, for he had nothing to 
leave behind him, except a heavy burden of debt. He 
had not yet made up his mind whether to write an ex- 
planatory letter to the father he had sorely tried, and a 
brief farewell to the mother who fondly loved him, and 
whom he loved almost as fondly ; or whether it were not 
better to leave only silence. 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


11 


Not in sheer frivolity was he rattling along the road to 
Parson’s Green. He had a stronger motive in going to 
Fridoline House than the desire to get rid of his last after- 
noon in the bustle and excitement of a herd of idle people. 
There would be someone there most likely whom he most 
ardently desired to meet, were it but to touch her hand 
and say good night — good night for ever — as she stepped 
into her carriage, or were it b^ut for one little smile across 
the crowd. 

She had told him only the night before, sitting out a 
waltz in the tropical heat of a staircase in Grosvenor 
square, that she meant to be at Lady Fridoline’s omnium 
gatherum. 

‘ One meets such queer people,’ she said, with the regula- 
tion insolence, ‘ I would not miss Lady Fridoline’s Zoolo- 
gical Varieties for worlds.’ 

A feather blown across her pathway might be enough 
to divert her fancy into another channel. He knew her 
well enough to know that there was no such thing as 
certainty where she was concerned, but on the off chance 
he went to Parson’s Green, and his eye ran eagerly along 
the double line of carriages, looking for her liveries. 

Yes, it was there, the barouche with its sober colouring, 
and the men in their dark>brown coats, black velvet 
breeches, and silk stockings, and the fine upstanding 
Cleveland bays, strong enough to pull a Carter- Patterson 
van, yet with enough breeding for beauty. Wealth ex- 
pressed itself herein that chastened form which education 
has imposed even upon the cit. The money that had 
bought that perfect equipage had all been made amidst the 
steam and grime of the stock exchange, but the carriage 
and its appointments were every whit as perfect as those 
of her Grace of Uplandshire, which stood next in the rank. 

She was there — the woman he wanted to see and speak 
with on this his last day. 

‘ I am coming, my love, my sweet,’ he muttered to 
himself, as he wrote* his name in the big book in the hall, 


12 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


the record by which Lady Fridoline was able to find out 
how many strangers and outsiders had been imposed upon 
her hospitality in the shape of friends friends. 

The crowd was tremendous ; the house and grounds 
buzzed with voices, through which from the bosquet 
yonder cut the sharp twanging notes of a Tyrolese Volk- 
slied, accompanied on the Streich zither ; while from an 
inner drawing-room sounded the long-drawn chords of a 
violin attacking a sonata by De Beriot. On the left of 
the great square hall was the dining-room filled with a 
gormandising crowd ; and on the lawn outside there was 
a subsidiary buffet under a pollarded Spanish chestnut 
which spread its rugged venerable limbs over a wide circle 
of turf, and made a low roofed tent of leaves that fiuttered 
and shivered in the sultry atmosphere. 

Every class was represented at Lady Fridoline’s garden- 
party ; or rather it might be said that everybody in Lon- 
don whom anyone could care to see was to be found on 
her Ladyship’s lawn or was to be hunted for in her Lady- 
ship’s extensive shrubberies. Literature and the Stage 
were not more conspicuous than Church and Bar — Church 
represented by its most famous preachers, Bar, by its most 
notorious advocates, to say nothing of a strong contingent 
of popular curates and clever stuff gowns. 

Every noteworthy arrival from the great world of 
English-speaking people across the Atlantic was to be seen 
at Lady Fridoline’s, from the scholar and enthusiast who 
had written seven octave volumes to prove that Don J uan 
was the joint work of Byron’s valet Fletcher and the 
Countess Guiccioli, to the miniature soubrette, the idol of 
New York, who had come to be seen and to conquer upon 
the boards of a London theatre. Everybody was there, 
for the afternoon was late, and the throng was thickest 
just at this hour. Gerard Hillersdon went about from 
group to group, everywhere received with cordiality and 
enipressement, but lingering nowhere — not even when the 
tiny soubrette told him she was just dying for anothet 


The World y The Flesh, and The Devil, 


13 


ice, and she reckoned he'd take her to the tree over there 
to get one — always in quest of that one somebody who 
made it worth his while to run the gauntlet of everybody. 
One of his oldest friends seized upon him, a man with 
whom he had been at Oxford seven years before, with 
whom he had maintained the friendship begun in those 
days, and who was not to be put ofi* with the passing 
hand-shake which served for other people. 

‘ I want a talk with you, Hillersdon. Why didn’t you 
look me up last Tuesday. We were to have dined and 
done a theatre. Don’t apologise ; I see you forgot all 
about it. By Jove, old fellow, you are looking dread- 
fully washed out. What have you been doing wdth your- 
self?’ 

‘Nothing beyond the usual mill-round. A succession 
of late parties may have impaired the freshness of my 
complexion.’ 

‘ Come up the river wdth me. Let me see, to-morrow 
will be Saturday. We can go to Oxford by the afternoon 
express, spend a couple of nights at the Mitre, look up the 
dons whom we knew as undergrads, and row down to 
Windsor by Tuesday night.’ 

‘I should adore it ; but it’s impossible. I have an en- 
i gagement which will keep me in London. I shall see you 
i again presently.’ 

He slipped out of the little group in which his friend 
figured. He had made the circuit of the lawn, looking 
right and left for that tall and graceful form which his 
eye would have recognised even afar off ; and now he 
plunged into the shrubberied labyrinth which lay between 
the fine, broad lawn and the high walls which secluded 
Lady Fridoline’s domain from the vulgar world. 

He passed a good many couples sauntering slowly in 
the leafy shade, and talking in those subdued accents 
which seem to mean very much, and often do mean very 
little. At last in the distance, he saw the one form and 
face that could conjure heart and senses into sudden tern- 


14 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


pest — a tall, dark woman, with proudly poised head and 
splendid eyes, who walked with leisurely yet firm step, and 
tossed her parasol to and fro as she walked with a move- 
ment eminently ei^pressive of ennui. 

She was walking with a j^oung man who was supposed 
to be a fast ascending star in the heaven of literature — a 
young man who was something of a journalist, and some- 
thing of a poet, who wrote short stories in the magazines, 
was believed to contribute to Punch, and was said to have 
written a three volume novel. But however brilliantly 
this young gentleman may be talking, Edith Champion 
had evidently had enough of him, for at sight of Hillers- 
don her face lighted up, and she held out her hand in 
eager w'elcome. 

They clasped hands, and he turned back and walked 
on her right in silence, while the journalist prattled on 
her left. Presently they met another trio of a mother 
and daughters, and the journalist was absorbed and swept 
along with this female brood, leaving Mrs. Champion and 
Hillersdon tete-a-tete. 

‘ I thought you were not coming,’ she said. 

' Did you doubt I should be here after you had told me 
I should see you ? I want to see as much of you as pos- 
sible to-day.’ 

‘ Why to-day more than all other days ? ’ 

‘ Because it is my last day in town.’ 

‘ What, you are leaving so soon ? Before Goodwood ! ’ 

‘ I don’t care two straws for Goodwood.’ 

‘Nor do I. But why bury oneself in the country or 
at some German bath too early in the year ? Autumn is 
always long enough. One need not anticipate it. Is 
your doctor sending you away ? Are you going for your 
cure ?’ 

‘Yes, I am ^oing for my cure.’ 

‘Where?’ 

‘ Suss-Schlaf Bad,’ he answered, inventing a name on 
the instant. 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 


15 


' I never heard of the place. One of those new springs 
which doctors are always developing, no doubt. Every 
man has his own particular fad in the way of a watering 
place. And you are really going to-morrow ? ’ 

‘To-morrow I shall be gone.’ 

‘ Alas, how shall I live without you ? ’ she sighed, with 
the prettiest, easiest, skin-deep sentiment, which wounded 
him almost more than her disdain could have done. ‘At 
least I must have all your society till you are gone. You 
must dine with me and share my opera box. ‘Don Gio- 
vanni ’ is an opera of which one can never have too 
much, and a new soprano is to be the Zerlina, a South 
American girl of whom great things are expected.’ 

‘Is Mr. Champion at home V 

‘No, he is in Antwerp. There is something important 
going on there — something to do with railways. You 
know how he rushes about. I shall have no one but my 
cousin, Mrs Gresham, whom you know of old, the Essex 
vicar’s lively wife. We shall be ^almost tete-a-tete. I 
shall expect you at eight o’clock.’ 

‘ I will be punctual. What a threatening day,’ he said, 
looking up at the gathering darkness which gave a win- 
try air to the summer foliage. ‘ There must be a storm 
coming.’ 

‘ Evidently. I think I had better go home. Will you 
take me to my carriage ? ’ 

‘ Let me get you some tea, at least, before you go.’ 

They strolled across the grass to the leafy tent. A 
good many people had left, scared by the thunder clouds. 
Lady Fridoline had deserted her post in the portico, tired 
of saying good-bye; and was taking a hasty cup of tea 
amidst a little knot of intimates. She was lamenting the 
non-arrival of someone. 

‘ So shameful to disappoint me, after distinctly promis- 
ing to be here,’ she said. 

‘Who is the defaulter, dear Lady Fridoline?’ asked 
Mrs. Champion. 

‘ Mr. Jermyn, the new thought reader.’ 


16 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


' Jermyn ! ’ echoed a middle aged man, who was attend- 
ing to Lady Fridoline’s tea, ‘ Jermyn, the mystery man. 
I should hardly call him by the old name of thought- 
reader. He marks a new departure in the regions of the 
uncanny. He is not content with picking up pins, or 
finding unconsidered trifles. He unearths people’s se- 
crets, reads their hidden lives in a most uncomfortable 
way. I have seen a large party reduced to gloom by half 
an hour of Mr. Jermyn. I would as soon invite Mephis- 
topheles to a garden party — but people are so morbid, 
they will hazard anything for a new sensation.’ 

‘It is something to touch only the fringe of other 
worlds,’ replied Lady Fridoline,’ and whatever Mr. Jer- 
myn’s power may be it lies beyond the boundary line of 
every-day existence. He told me of circumstances in my 
own life that it was impossible for him to have discovered 
except by absolute divination.’ 

‘ Then you believe in his power of divination ? ’ asked 
Mrs. Champion, with languid interest. 

‘ I can’t help believing.’ 

‘ Yes, because you have not found out the trick of the 
thing. There is always a trick in these things, which is 
inevitably found out sooner or later; and then people 
wonder that they can have been so foolish as to believe’, 
said Mrs. Champion. 

The curtain of leaves near where she was standing 
parted as she spoke, and a young man came through the 
opening, a young man whom Lady Fridoline welcomed 
eagerly. 

‘ I was just telling my friends how disappointed I should 
be if you did not come,’ she said, and then, turning to 
Edith Champion, she introduced the new comer as Mr. 
Jermyn. 

‘ Lady Fridoline has been trying to make us feel creepy 
by her description of your occult powers, Mr. Jermyn,’ 
said Mrs. Champion, ‘ but you do not look a very alarm- 
ing personage.’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


17 


‘La(]y Fridoline exaggerated my poor gifts in her infi- 
nite kindness/ replied Jermyn, with a laugh that had a 
gnome-like sound to Mrs. Champion’s ear. 

Mr. Jermyn was a pleasant-looking young man, tall, 
slim, and fair, with a broad, strongly-marked brow, which 
receded curiously above the temples, and with hair and 
moustache of that pale yellowish hue which seems most 
appropriate to the faun and satyr races. Something in 
the way this short curling hair was cut about brow and 
ears, or in the shape of the ears themselves, suggested the 
satyr type ; otherwise there was nothing in the young 
man’s physiognomy, bearing, or dress which made him 
different from other well-bred and well-dressed men of 
his age. His laugh had a fresh and joyous ring, which 
made it agreeable to hear, and he laughed often, looking 
at the commonest things in a mirthful spirit. 

Lady Fridoline insisted upon his taking some refresh- 
ments, and when he had disposed of a lemon-ice, she car- 
ried him off for a stroll round the lawn, eager to let peo- 
ple see her latest celebrity. There was a little buzz of 
talk, and an obvious excitement in the air as he passed 
group after group. He had shown himself rarely in so- 
ciety, and his few performances had been greatly discussed 
and written about. Letters exalting him as a creature 
gifted with superhuman powers had alternated with let- 
ters denouncing him as an impostor in one of the most 
popular daily papers. The people who are always ready 
to believe in the impossible were loud in the assertion of 
his good faith, and would not hear of trickery or impos- 
ture. 

There was an eager expectation of some exhibition of 
his powers this afternoon, as he walked across the lawn 
with Lady Fridoline, and people who had been on the 
point of departure ‘lingered in the hope of being thrilled 
and frightened, as they had heard of other people being 
thrilled and frightened, by this amiable-looking youth 
with the fair complexion and yellow hair. The very in- 


18 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


congruity of that fair and youthful aspect with the ghast- 
ly or the supernatural made Justin Jermyn so much the 
more interesting. 

He walked about the grounds with his hostess for some 
time, all her duties of leave-taking suspended, and she to 
all appearance absorbed in earnest conversation with the 
Fate-Revealer, everyone watchful and expectant. Hil- 
lersdou and Mrs. Champion were sitting side by side 
upon a rustic bench, the lady no longer in a hurry to 
depart. 

‘ You don’t believe in any nonsense of this kind, I 
know,’ she said, in her low, listless voice, without looking 
at her companion. 

‘ I believe in nothing but disillusion, the falsehood in- 
herent in all things.’ 

‘ You are in an unhappy mood to-day, I think,’ she said, 
looking at him now with a touch of interest. 

‘Atmospherical, perhaps,’ he answered, with a laugh, 
‘you can hardly expect anybody to feel very happy un- 
der that leaden sky.’ 

Lady Fridoline and her companion had separated. He 
was walking towards the house ; she was going rapidly 
from group to group, talking and explaining with ani- 
mated gestures. 

‘ There is going to be a performance,’ said Mrs. Cham- 
pion, rising. ‘ If there is any excitement to be had let us 
have our share of it.’ 

‘ You want the secrets of your life to be read ? ’ asked 
Gerard. 

‘ Yes, yes, yes. I want to see what modern magic 
can do.’ 

^ And you are not afraid ? That is because yours is 
only a surface life— an existence that begins and ends in 
wealth and luxurj^, fine clothes and fine horses. What 
have you to fear from sorcery ? There are no more secrets 
in your life than a doll’s life.’ 

‘ You are very impertinent.’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


19 


‘ I am going away, and I can afford to quarrel with you. 
Would to God I could stir some kind of feeling in you — 
yes, even make you angry before I go.’ 

‘ I arn afraid you are an egotist,’ she said, smiling at 
him with lovely, inscrutable eyes. 

She went across the lawn to Lady Fridoline. 

‘ Are you going to have any magic ? ’ she asked. 

‘ You must not utter the word before Mr. Jermyn, un- 
less you want to offend him. He has a horror of any 
idea of that kind. He calls his wonderful gift only in- 
sight, the power to look through the face into the mind 
behind it, and from the mind to the life which the mind 
has shaped and guided. He claims no occult power — only 
a keener vision than the common run of mankind. He is 
going to sit in the library for the next half-hour, and if 
anybody wants to test his capacity they can go in — one 
at a time — and talk to him.’ 

Anybody seemed likely to be everybody in this case, 
for 'there was a general and hurried movement towards 
the house. 

‘Come,’ said Edith Champion, peremptorily, and she 
and Hillersdon followed the crowd, getting in advance of 
most people, with swift, vigorous steps. 

The library at Fridoline House was a large room that 
occupied nearly the whole of one wing. It was ap- 
proached by a corridor, and Mrs. Champion and her escort 
found this corridor choked with people, all eager to in- 
terview Mr. Jermyn. 

The approach to the oracle was strongly defended, how- 
ever, by two gentlemen, who had been told off for that 
purpose, one being a general of Engineers and the other a 
Professor of Natural Science. 

‘We shall never get through this herd,’ said Gerard, 
looking with infinite contempt at the throng of smart 
people, all panting for a new sensation. ‘ Let us try the 
other way.’ 

was an intimate at Fridoline House, and knew his 


20 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


way to the small ante-room at the back of the library. 
If the doDr of that rooih were unguarded he and his com- 
panion might surprise the wizard, and steal a march upon 
all that expectant frivolity in the corridor. The whole 
thing was beneath contempt, no doubt, and he, Gerard 
Hillersdon, was not even faintly interested in it, but 
it interested Edith Champion, and he was anxious to gra- 
tify her whim. 

He led her round by the hall and Lady Fridoline’s bou- 
doir to the room behind the library, opened the door ever 
so gently, and listened to the voices within. 

‘ It is wonderful, positively wonderlul,’ said a voice in 
awe-stricken undertones. 

‘ Are you satisfied, Madame ; have I told you enough ? * 
asked Jermyn. 

* More than enough. You have made me utterly mis- 
erable.' 

Then came the flutter of a silken skirt, and the open- 
ing and closing of a door, and then Jermyn looked 
quickly towards that other door which Hillersdon was 
holding ajar. 

‘^Who's there,' he asked. 

‘ A lady who would like to talk with you before you 
are exhausted by that clamorous herd in the corridor. 
May she come to you at once ? ' 

‘ It is Mrs. Champion,' said Jermyn. * Yes, let her 
come in.' 

‘ He could not possibly have seen me,' whispered the 
lady, who had been standing behind the door. 

‘ He divined your presence. He is no more a magician 
than I ana in that matter,' said Hillersdon, as she passed 
him, and closed the door behind her. 

She came out after a few minutes' conference, much 
paler than when she entered. 

‘ Well, has he told the lovely doll her latest secret, the 
mystery of a new gown from Felix or Raumtz? ' asked 
Gerard. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


21 


‘ I will see you now, if you have anything to say to me, 
Mr. Hillersdon,’ said Jermyn, airily. 

am with you in a moment,’ answered Gerard, lin- 
gering on the threshold, and holding Edith Champion’s 
hand in both of his. ‘ Edith, what has he said to you ; 
you look absolutely frightened.’ 

‘ Yes, he«. has frightened me — frightened me by telling 
me my own thoughts. I did not know I was so full of 
sin. Let me go, Gerard. He has made me hate myself. 
He will do as much for you, perhaps ; make you odious 
in your own eyes. Yes, go to him ; hear all that he can 
tell you.’ 

She broke from him, and hurried away, he looking, 
after her anxiously. Then, with a troubled sigh, he went 
to hear what this new adept of a doubtful science might 
have to say to him. 

The library was always in shadow at this hour, and 
now, with that grey threatening sky outside the long nar- 
row Queen Anne windows, the room was wrapped in a 
wintry darkness, against which the smiling countenance 
of the diviner stood out in luminous relief. 

'Sit down, Mr. Hillersdon, I am not going to hurry 
because of that mob outside,’ said Jermyn, gaily, throw- 
ing himself back in the capacious arm chair, and turning 
his beaming face towards Hillersdon. ‘ I am interested 
in the lady who has just left me, and I am still more 
deeply interested in you ? ’ 

' I ought to feel honoured by that interest,’ said Hil- 
lersdon, ‘but I confess to a doubt of its reality. What 
can you know of a man whom you have seen for the first 
time within the last half-hour ? ’ 

‘ I am so sorry for you,’ said Jermyn, ignoring the 
direct question, ‘ so sorry. A young man of your natural 
gifts — clever, handsome, well-bred — to be so tired of life 
already, so utterly despondent of the future and all its 
infinite chances, that you are going to throw up the 
sponge, and make an end of it all to-night. It is really 
too sad.’ 


22 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


Hillersdon stared at him in blank amazement. Mr. 
Jermyn made the statement as if it were the most natural 
thing in the world that he should have fathomed the 
young man’s intention. 

‘ I cannot accept compassion from anyone, least of all 
from a total stranger,’ he said. ‘ Pray what is there in 
my history or my appearance that moves you to this wild 
conjecture ? ’ 

‘ No matter by what indications I read your intentions,’ 
answered Jermyn, lightly, ‘you know I have read you 
right. You are one of my easiest cases ; everything about 
you is obvious — stares me full in the face. The lady who 
has just left us needed a subtler power of interpretation. 
She is not one of those who wear their hearts upon their 
sleeves ; and yet I think she will admit that I startled 
her. As for you, my dear fellow, I am particularly frank 
because I want to prevent you carrying out that foolish 
notion of yours. The last and worst thing that a man 
can do with his life is to throw it away.’ 

‘ I admit no man’s right to offer me advice.’ 

‘ You think that is out of my line. I am a fortune 
teller, and nothing else. Well, I will tell you your for- 
tune, Mr. Hillersdon, if you like. You will not carry out 
your present intention — yet awhile, or in the mode and 
manner you have planned. Good afternoon.’ He dis- 
missed his visitor with a careless nod as he rose to open 
the door communicating with the corridor, whence came a 
buzz of eager voices, mixed with light laughter. People 
were prepared to be startled, yet could not but regard the 
whole business in a somewhat jocular spirit. It was only 
the select few who gave Justin Jermyn credit for occult 
power. 

Edith Champion was one of the handsomest women in 
London, a women whose progress was followed at all great 
parties and public gatherings by the hum of an admiring 
multitude, whispering her praises or telling the unin- 
formed that the beautiful dark-eyed woman with the tall, 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


23 


Juno-like form was the Mrs. Champion. Four years ago 
she had been one of a trio of lovely sisters, the daughters 
of an impecunious Yorkshire squire, a man who had wasted 
a fine fortune on the turf, and was ending his days in debt 
and difficulty at a moated grange in the West Riding. 
The three lovely sisters were such obviously marketable 
property that aunts and uncles were quick to compassion- 
ate their forlorn condition, and they were duly launched 
in London society. The two elder were young women of 
singular calmness and perspicuity, and got themselves 
well married, the first to a wealthy baronet, the second to 
a marquis, without giving trouble to anybody concerned 
in the transaction ; but the youngest girl, Edith, showed 
herself wayward and wilful, and expressed an absurd 
desire to marry Gerald Hillersdon, the man she loved. 
This desire was frustrated, but not so promptly as it 
should have been, and the young lady contrived to make 
her attachment public property before uncles or aunts 
could crush the fiowers of sentiment under the heavy foot 
of worldly wisdom. But the sentiment was crushed some- 
how, the world knew not with how many tears, or with 
what girlish pleading for mercy, and the season after this 
foolish entanglement Edith Champion accepted the ad- 
dresses of an elderly stockbroker and reputed millionaire, 
who made a handsomer settlement than the astute mar- 
quis had made on her elder sister. 

Mr. Champion was good natured and unsuspicious, his 
mind almost entirely absorbed in that exciting race for 
wealth, which had been the business of his life from boy- 
hood. He wanted a beautiful wife as the ornament of his 
declining years, and the one thing needed to complete the 
costly home which he had built for himself on a heathy 
ridge among those romantic hills where Surrey overlooks 
Sussex. The wife was the final piece of furniture to be 
chosen for this palace, and he had chosen that crowning 
ornament in a very deliberate and leisurely manner. He 
was the last man to plague himself by any foolish specula- 


24 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


tions as to the sentiments of the lady so honoured, or to 
be harassed by doubts of her fidelity. He had no objection 
to seeing his wife surrounded by youthful admirers — was 
she not meant to be admired, as much as his pictures and 
statues ? He found no fault with the chosen band of 
‘nice boys’ who attended her afternoon at home, or filled 
the back of her box between the acts at opera-house or 
theatre; and if Gerard Hillersdon were more constant 
than all the others in his attendance the fact never pre- 
sented itself in any unpleasant light to Mr. Champion. 
Had he given himself the trouble to think about his wife’s 
relations with her cavaliere servente he would most as- 
suredly had told himself that she was much too well 
placed to overstep the limits of prudence, and that no 
woman in her right senses would abandon a palace in 
Surrey and a model house in Hertford-street for the car- 
avanseries that lodge the divorcee. He would have re- 
membered also with satisfaction that his wife’s settle- 
ment, liberal as it was, would be made null and void by 
an elopement. 

And thus for three years of his life — perhaps the three 
best and brightest years in a man’s life, from twenty-five 
to twenty-eight — Gerard Hillersdon had given up all his 
thoughts, aspirations, and dreams to the most hopeless of 
all love affairs, an attachment to a virtuous married wo- 
man, a woman who had accepted her lot as an unloving 
wife and who meant to do her duty, in her own cold and 
measured way, to an unloved husband ; yet who clung to 
the memory of a girlish love and fostered the passion of 
her lover, caring, or at least seeming to care, nothing for 
his peace, and never estimating the wrong she was doing 
him. 

To this one passion everything in the young man’s life 
had been sacrificed. He had begun his career stuffed 
with ambition, believing in his capacity to succeed in 
more than one profession, and in the first flush of his 
manhood he had done some really good work in imagin- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


25 


ative literature, and had made his brief • success as an ori- 
ginal writer, romantic, light of touch, unconventional; 
but he had been drifted into idleness by a woman who 
treated him as some Queen or Princess in the days of 
chivalry might have treated her page. She spoilt his 
career, just when a lasting success was within his reach, 
needing only earnestness and industry on his part. She 
had wasted the golden days of his youth, and had given 
him in exchange only smiles and sweet words, and a place 
at her dinner table in a house where he had lost all pres- 
tige from being seen there too often, the one inevitable 
guest whose presence counted for nothing. He had been 
in all things her slave, offending the people she disliked, 
and wasting his attention and his substance on her favour- 
ites, faithful to her caprice of the hour, were it never so 
foolish. 

And now after three years of this fond slavery the 
end had come. He was ruined, and was worse than 
ruined. He had been living from hand to mouth, writ- 
ing for magazines and newspapers, earning a good deal 
of money in a casual way, but never enough to keep him 
out of debt ; and now he saw bankruptcy staring him in 
the face, and with bankruptcy dishonour, for he had gam- 
bling debts which, as the son of a country parson, he ought 
never to have incurred, and which it would be disgrace 
not to pay. 

Had this scandal been his only rock ahead, he might 
have treated it as other men have treated such dark epi- 
sodes. He might have told himself that England is not 
the world, and that there is alwaj's room for youth and 
daring under the tropic stars, and that the name with 
which a man has been labled at starting in life is not so 
interwoven with his being that he need mind changing it 
for another, and giving himself a fresh start. He might 
have reasoned thus had he still felt the delight in life 
which makes the adventurer live down shame and set his 
face to untrodden worlds across the sea. But he had no 
B 


26 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil, 


such delight. The zest of life had gone out of him. 
Love itself had lost all fervor. He hardly knew whether 
he cared any more fcr the woman to whom he had sacri- 
ficed his youth, whether the flame of love had not expired 
altogether amidst the vanity of two conventional exis- 
tences. The only thing which he knew for certain was 
that he loved no other woman, and that he took no in- 
terest in life adequate to the struggle it would cost him 
to live through the crisis that was coming. 

And thus, with all serious and deliberate consideration, 
he had decided upon a sudden exit from a scene which 
no longer interested him. Yet with a curious inconsist- 
ency he wanted to spend his last hours in Edith Cham- 
pion's society, and never had he seemed gayer or happier 
than he seemed that evening at the triangular dinner in 
Hertford street. 

They were dining in a little octagon room at the back 
of the house, a room upholstered like a tent, and furnished 
in so Oriental a fashion that it seemed a solecism to be 
sitting upon chairs, and not to be eating pillau or Kibobs 
with one's fingers. The clerical cousin was a very agree- 
able personage — plump and rosy, strongly addicted to 
good living, and looking upon the beautiful Mrs. Cham- 
pion as a person whose normal state was to be adored by 
well-bred young men, and to dispense hospitality to poor 
relations. 

Not a word was said about Justin Jermyn throughout 
the dinner, but while Gerard was helping Mrs. Champion 
to put on her cloak she asked suddenly : 

‘ How did you get on with the Fate-reader ?' 

‘ Very badly. He struck me as an insolent /arceur. I 
wonder society can encourage such a person.' 

‘ Yes, he is decidedly insolent. I was rather scared by 
the things he said to me, but a few minutes' thought 
showed me that his talk was mere guess work. I sh^all 
never ask him to any party of mine.' 

‘ You must have rushed away in a great hurry. I was 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 27 

only five minutes closeted with the oracle, but when I 
went to the hall you and your carriage had vanished/ 

‘ I had an irresistible desire to get out of the house. I 
felt as if I were escaping from To[)het ; and then I had to 
call for Mrs. Gresham,' the cousin, ‘ at the Knightsbridge 
Riding School, where the poor thing had been slaving at 
Lady Penniddock's refreshment stall/ 

‘ It was abject slavery/ protested Mrs. Gresham/ ‘ Pm 
afraid I shall detest tea and coffee all the days of my life, 
and I was so fond of them,' with profound regret, ‘ and 
the very look of a bath bun will make me ill/ 

‘Depechons,' said Mrs. Champion. ‘We shall hear 
very little of the new Zerlina if we go on dawdling here.' 

And so in a feverish hurry she led the way to her car- 
riage, where there was just room enough for Gerard on 
the front seat. 


CHAPTER II. 


“Through a glass darkly.” 

^ HE opera house was brilliantly filled. There 
were a great many important functions going 
on that evening, events thickening as the sea- 
son sloped towards its close, and it may be that 
the new Zerlina had not been sufficiently 
puffed, or that the real music lovers who can never 
have too much Mozart are only the minority among 
opera-goers. There were a good many blank spaces 
in the stalls, and a good many untenanted boxes, nor was 
the display of diamonds and beauty as splendid as it 
might have been. ' 

In an audience at half power Mrs. Champion’s Oriental 
loveliness and Mrs. Champion’s tiara of diamond stars 



28 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


shone conspicuous. She was dressed with that careless 
air which was her specialty, in some filmy fabric of daffo- 
dil color, which was arranged in loose folds across her 
bust and shoulders, the folds caught here and there, as if 
at random, with a diamond star. A great cluster of yel- 
low orchids was fastened on one shoulder, and there were 
yellow orchids pinned on her black lace fan, while long 
black gloves gave rather a touch of eccentricity to her 
toilette. Her one object in dressing herself was to be dif- 
ferent from other women. She never wore the fashion- 
able colour or the fashionable fabric, but gloried in oppo- 
sition, and took infinite pains to find something in Paris 
or Vienna which nobody was wearing in London. 

The awe-inspiring music which closes the second act, 
and seems to presage the horror of the scenes that are 
coming, was hurrying to its brilliant finish, when Gerard, 
looking idly down upon the stalls, started at sight of the 
man who had mystified him more than any other human 
being had ever done. There, lounging in his place be- 
tween two unoccupied seats, he saw Mr. Jermyn, appar- 
ently enjoying the music with that keen enthusiasm 
which only the real music-lover can feel. His head was 
thrown back, his thin, pale lips, were slightly parted, and 
his large blue eyes beamed with rapture. Yes, a man 
who passionately loved music, or else a most consummate 
actor. 

The very presence of the man called Gerard Hillersdon 
to the business which was to be done after the green cur- 
tain had fallen, and his fair companions had been handed 
into their carriage. Ten minutes in a hansom, and he 
would be in his lodgings, and there would be no excuse 
for delay. His time would have come before the clock of 
St. James' Church struck midnight. He had looked at 
his pistol-case involuntarily when he had dressed for the 
evening. He knew where it stood ready to his hand, and 
close beside the pistol-case was a business-like letter from 
his landlord requesting the settlement of a long account 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


29 


for rent and maintenance — only such breakfasts and cas- 
ual meals as a young man of fashion takes at his lodgings 
— which had mounted to formidable figures. And an 
ounce of lead was to be the sole settlement. For the first 
time in his life Mr. Hillersdon felt sorry for those emi- 
nently respectable people, his landlord and landlady. He 
began to question whether he ought not at least to shoot 
himself out of doors, rather than to inflict upon an old- 
established lodging-house the stigma of a suicide ; but the 
inconvenience of self-destruction sub jove was too appar- 
ent to him, and he felt that he must be selfish in this final 
act of a purely selfish life. Yes, there sat Justin Jermyn, 
complacent, full of enjoyment; the man who had told 
him what he was going to do. How the modern sorcerer 
would pride himself upon that foreknowledge to-morrow 
when the evening papers told of the deed that had been 
done — there would doubtless be a paragraph in the pa- 
pers — three lines at most — and perhaps a line on the con- 
tents bill. Distressing Suicide of a Gentleman. Sui- 
cides are always described as distressing when the self- 
slaughterer is of gentle blood. 

He felt angry with Jermyn for having contrived to 
haunt these last hours of his life. He sat watching the 
sorcerer all through the last act at the opera, noting his 
elfin enjoyment of all that was diabolical in the music and 
the libretto. How he grinned at the discomfiture of Don 
Giovanni, how he rocked himself with laughter at the ab- 
ject terror of Leperello. No one approached him as an 
acquaintance. He sat in complete isolation, but in su- 
preme enjoyment, apparently the happiest man in that 
great theatre, the youngest and the freshest in the capa- 
city to enjoy. 

‘And that laughing fool read my purpose as if my brain 
had been an open book,’ mused Hillersdon savagely. 

His anger was not lessened when he glanced round 
while he was conducting Mrs. Champion to her carriage, 
and saw the Fate-reader s slim, supple figure behind him, 


so 


The World, The Flesh, and The DevU. 


and the Fate-reader s gnome-like countenance smiling at 
him under an opera hat. 

‘ I am sorry you are leaving London so soon/ said Mrs. 
Champion, as he lingered at the carriage door for the one 
half- minute allowed by the Jack in office at his elbow. 

She gave him her hand, and even pressed the hand 
which held hers, with more sentiment than she was wont 
to show. 

‘ Drive on coachman,’ shouted the Commissionaire. No 
time for sentimental partings there ! 

Hillersdon walked out of the covered colonnade, mean- 
ing to pick up the first hansom that offered itself. He 
had not gone three steps along the Bowstreet pavement 
when Jermyn was close beside him. 

‘ Are you going home, Mr. Hillersdon ? ’ he asked, in a 
friendly tone. ‘Delightful opera, “ Don Giovani,” ain’t it ? 
The best out and away. “ Faust” is my next favourite ; 
but even Gounod can’t touch Mozart.’ 

‘ T daresay not ; but I am no connoisseur. Good night 
Mr. Jermyn. I am going home immediately.’ 

‘ Don’t ; come and have some supper with me. I only 
half told your fortune this afternoon, you were so deucedly 
impatient? I have a good deal more to tell you. Come 
and have some supper in my chambers.’ 

‘ Some other night, perhaps, Mr. Jermyn. I am going 
straight home.’ 

‘And you mean there shall be no other nights in your 
life ? ’ said J ermy n, in a low, silky voice that made Hillers- 
don savage, for it jarred upon his irritated nerves more 
than the harshest accents could have done. 

‘ Good night,’ he said curtly, turning on his heeL 

Jermyn was not to be repulsed. 

‘ Come home with me,’ he said, ‘ I won’t leave you 
while you have the suicide’s line on your forehead. Come 
to supper with me, Hillersdon. I have a brand of cham- 
pagne that will smooth out that ugly wrinkle, if you’ll 
only give the stuff a fair trial.’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


31 


‘ I don’t know where you live, and I don’t care a jot for 
your wines or anybody else’s. I am leaving town to-mor- 
row morning, and I want my last hours in London for 
my own purposes/ 

Jermyn put his arm through Hillersdon’s, wheeled him 
around in the direction of Longacre, and quietly led him 
away. That was his answer to Hillersdon’s testy speech, 
and the young man submitted, feeling a vis inertioe, 
a languid indifference which made him consentient to 
a stranger’s will, having lost all will power of his 
own. 

He was angry with J ermyn, yet even more angry with 
himself, and in that stormy sense of indignation, tem- 
pered curiously with supineness, he took but little note of 
which way they went. He remembered going by Lin- 
coln’s Inn Fields and the Turnstile. He remembered 
crossing Holborn, but knew not afterwards whether the 
shabby, squalid looking inn beneath whose gloomy gate- 
house Jermyn led him did, or did not, open directly out of 
the great thoroughfare. 

He remembered always that it was a most dismal look- 
ing concatenation of tall, shabby houses, forming a quad- 
rangle, in whose stony centre there was a dilapidated 
basin, which might once have been a fountain. The 
summer moon, riding high and fast amid wind-tossed 
clouds, shone full into the stony yard, and lit up the 
shabby fronts of the houses, but not one lamp-lit window 
cheered with the suggestion of life and occupation. 

‘ Do you mean to say you live in this ghastly hole ? ’ he 
exclaimed, speaking for the first time since they left Bow- 
street ; ‘ it looks as if it were tenanted by a company of 
ghosts/ 

‘ A good many of the houses are empty, and I daresay 
the ghosts of dead usurers and dishonest lawyers and 
broken-hearted clients do have a high time in the old 
rooms now and again/ answered Jermyn, with his irre- 
pressible laugh ; ' but I have never seen any company 


32 


The Worldj The Flesh, and The Devil. 


but rats, mice, and such small deer, as Bacon says. Of 
course he was Bacon. We’re all agreed upon that.’ 

Hillersdon ignored this frivolity, and stood dumbly, 
while J ermyn put his key into a door, opened it, and led 
the way into a passage that was pitch dark. Not a 
pleasant situation to be alone in a dark passage at mid- 
night in a scarcely inhabited block of buildings quite cut 
off from the rest of the world with a man whose repute 
was decidedly diabolical. 

Jermyn struck a match and lighted a small hand-lamp, 
which improved the situation just a little. 

‘ This is my den,’ he said, ‘ and I have made the place 
pretty comfortable inside, though it looks rather uncanny 
outside.’ 

He led the way up an old oak staircase, narrow, shabby, 
and unadorned, but oak-panelled, and therefore precious 
in the eyes of those who cling fondly to the past and to 
that old London which is so swiftly vanishing off the face 
of the earth. 

The little lamp gave but just [enough light to 
make the darkness of the staircase visible, till they came 
to a landing where the moon looked in through the 
murky panes of a tall window, and anon to a higher 
landing, where a vivid streak of lamplight under a door 
gave the first token of habitation. Jermyn opened this 
door, and his guest stood half blinded by the brilliant 
light, and not a little astonished by the elegant luxury 
of those two rooms, opening into each other with a wide 
archway, which Mr. Jermyn had called his ‘ den.’ 

Hillersdon had been in many bachelor-rooms, within 
the precints of The Albany, in Picadilly, St. James’s, and 
Mayfair, but he had seen nothing more studiously luxuri- 
ous than the Fate-reader’s den. Heavy velvet curtains, 
of darkish green, draped the shuttered windows. The 
ingle nook wcs quaint, artistic, comfortable, the glistening 
tiles were decorated with storks and seabirds, which might 
have been painted by Stacey Marks himself. The furni- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 83 

ture was all that is most rare and genuine in the relics of 
the Chippendale era. The carpet was a marvel of Orien- 
tal undertones, and Oriental richness of fabric. The few 
I pieces of pottery which made spots of vivid colour here 
and there amidst the prevailing sombrerjess of hue, were 
choicest specimens of Indian and Italian ware. The 
pictures were few. A Judas, by Titian; a wood nymph, 
naked and unashamed, against a dark background of 
foliage, by Guido ; and three curious bits of the early Ger- 
man school, made up the show of art, save for a bust of 
the Fate-reader, in black marble, a curiously faithful like- 
ness, in which the fawn-like character of the head, and 
the elfin smile, were but slightly accentuated. This bust 
stood upon a pedestal of dark red marble, and seemed to 
command the room. 

The inner room was furnished as a library. There 
the lamps were shaded and the light subdued. Here 
under the centre lamp that hung low over the small, round 
dining-table appeared all the arrangements for a dainty 
little supper. Two covered dishes on a chafing dish ; a 
truffled pullet and miniature York ham, a lobster salad, 
strawberries, peaches, champagne in a brazen ice pail, 
ornamented with Bacchanalian figures, in repousse work. 

‘My servant has gone to bed,' said Jermyn, ‘but he 
has left everything ready, and we can't wait upon each 
other. Cutlets, salmi aux olives,' he said, lifting the cov- 
ers; ‘ which may I give you ? ' 

‘Neither, thanks. I told you I had no appetite.' 

‘Discouraging to a man who is as hiingry as a hunter,' 
retorted Jermyn, helping himself. ‘ Try that Madeira, it 
may give you an appetite.' 


Hillersdon seated himself opposite his host and took a 
glass of wine. His curiosity was stimulated by the Fate- 
reader’s surroundings; and, after all, the thing which he 
had to do might stand over for a few hours. He could 
not help being interested in this young man, who either 
by instinct or by a happy guess had fathomed his pur- 


34 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


pose. The luxury of these rooms piqued him, so striking 
a contrast with the shabbiness of his own West End lodg- 
ing, albeit the lodging was far from cheap. He was 
supposed to pay for ‘ situation/ Of luxury he had nothing, 
of comfort very little. How did J ermyn contrive to be 
so well off, he wondered ? Did he live by Fate-reading, 
or had he means of his own ? 

J ermyn was eating his supper all this while, and with 
a fine appetite and an epicurean gusto. After a couple 
of glasses of Madeira, his guest helped himself to lobster 
salad, and when Jermyn opened the champagne the two 
men were hob-nobbing comfortably, and, that wine being 
choice of its kind and admirably iced, Hillersdon drank 
the best part of a bottle, and found himself enjoying his 
supper more than he had enjoyed anything in the way of 
meat and drink for a long time. 

The conversation during supper was of the lightest, 
Jermyn letting off his criticisms, mostly unfavourable, 
upon people known to them both, and laughing tremen- 
dously at his own wit. He was careful not to mention 
Mrs, Champion, however, and Hillersdon had no objection 
to spatter mud upon the ruck of his acquaintance. Sup- 
per over, and a box of cigars open between them, with a 
silver spirit lamp shaped like a serpent offering its 
fiaming jaws for their use, the men grew more serious. 
It was past one o’clock. They had been a long time over 
their supper, and they seemed no longer strangers — 
intimates, rather, not united by any particular esteem for 
each ether, but one in their contempt for other people. 

‘ The champagne has wiped out that ugly wrinkle 
already,’ said J ermjm, with his friendly air ; ‘ and now tell 
me what could induce you to contemplate such a thing/ 

‘ What thing ? ’ asked Hillersdon, waxing moody. 

Jermyn’s reply was pantomimic. He passed his hand 
across his throat, significant of a razor ; he turned his 
hand towards his open mouth, suggestive of a pistol ; he 
tossed off an imaginary poison cup. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 35 

‘You insist upon suggesting — ’ began Hillersdon, 
angrily. 

‘ I tell you I saw it in your face. The man who con- 
templates suicide has a look which no man who reads the 
human countenance can mistake. There is a fixed horror 
in the eyes, as of one who stares into the unknown, and 
knows that he is nearing the mystery of life and death, 
There are perplexed lines about the brow, ‘ shall I, or 
shall I not ? ' and there is a nervous hurry ,^as of one who 
wants to get a disagreeable business over as soon as may 
be. I have never been mistaken yet in that look. 
Why, my dear fellow, why ? Surely life at eight and 
twenty is too precious a thing to be frittered away for a 
trifie.’ 

‘ You take my life when you do take the means by 
which I live,’' ’ quoted Hillersdon. 

‘Bacon again!’ That fellow has something to say 
about everything. You imply that you are impecunious, 
and would rather be dead than penniless.’ 

‘ Take it so, if you please.’ 

‘ Good. Now how can you tell that fortune is not 
waiting for you at some turn in the road : you know not 
that road of the future which no man knows till he treads 
it. So long as a man is alive there is always a chance of 
becoming a millionaire. So long as a woman is unmar- 
ried there is always a possibility of her being made a 
duchess.’ 

‘The chance of increasing my fortune in my case is so 
remote that it is not worth considering. I am the 
younger son of a younger son, I have no relative living 
iikely to leave me the smallest legacy. Unless I could 
make a fortune by literature, I have no chance of making 
one by any exertion of my own, and my second book 
was so dire a failure that I have it not in me to write a 
third.’ 

‘ Fortunes drop from the clouds sometimes. Have 
you never done any rich man a service which might 


36 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


prompt him — when distributing superfluous thousands — 
to leave a few to you V 

‘ Never, within my recollection/ 

‘ Come, now, looking back at your life, is there no acts 
in it of which you might fairly be proud, no touch of the 
heroic, no deed worthy a paragraph in the papers ? ' 

‘ None. I once saved an old man s life, but I doubt if 
the life were worth saving; since the old wretch did not 
trouble himself to thank me for having risked my own 
life in his service/ 

'You saved an old man’s life at hazard of your own ! ( 
Come, that sounds heroic/ cried Jermyn, flinging his fair 
head back against the blackish green of the velvet chair 
cover, and laughing with all his might. The black bust 
showed a little to the left, above the level of his head, 
and it seemed to Hillersdon that the black face was ^ 
laughing as broadly as the white one. j 

‘ Tell me the whole story — pray now — it sounds abso- , 
lutely heroic,’ urged Jermyn. ; 

' There is very little to tell/ replied Hillersdon*coolly. ^ 

‘ Nothing either to laugh at or to be thrilled by. I did 
only what any other active young man would have done 
in my position, seeing a feeble old man in peril of imme- , 
diate death. It was at Nice. You know what a wilder- , 
ness of iron the railway station there is, and how one has 
to hunt about for one’s train. It was at carnival time, 
dusk, and a great many people were going back to Can- \ 
lies, I myself among them. The old man had arrived 
from another train going eastwards, and was making for 
the platform, when a great, high engine bore steadily 
down upon him, by no means at express speed, but fast 
enough to paralyse him, so that instead of getting out of 
the way, he stood staring, hesitating, helpless. An instant 
more and that vast mass of iron would have cut him 
down and dashed the life out of him. I had but time to 
drag him out of the track before the engine passed me, 
brushing my shoulder as it went by. I took him to the 


The Worldj The Fleshy and The Devil. 


37 


platform. Hardly anyone had seen our adventure. I 
had a friend with me at the station, with whom I had 
lunched at the Cosmopolitan, and who had insisted on 
seeing me off. I told him briefly what had happened, 
left the old man in his care, and rushed back to look for 
my own train, which I caught by the skin of my teeth/ 
^ And the old churl never thanked you ? ’ 

‘ Not by a word. His only remark was an inquiry 
about his umbrella, which had fallen out of his hand 
I when I plucked him from the jaws of death. I believe 
he felt himself aggrieved because I had not rescued his 
umbrella as well as himselC 

‘ Was he English, do you think ? ^ 

‘ Distinctly British, A Frenchman or Italian would 
at least have been loquacious, if not grateful/ 

" The shock may have made him speechless.’ 

^ He found speech to inquire after his umbrella.’ 

‘True, that looked black!’ said Jermyn, laughing; 
‘ I’m afraid he must have been a thankless old dog. And 
you never troubled to find out who he was, I suppose — 
what manner of man you had snatched from sudden death?’ 

! ‘ I had not the slightest interest in his identity/ 

‘ So ! Well, now, let us talk still further of yourself 
and your prospects. You know that people call me the 
Fate-reader. Now, I have a fancy that your fortunes are 
on the threshold of a great change — and that, apart from 
the folly of anticipating Death, the inevitable, in your 
case it may be very much worth your while to live.’ 

‘ You are vague and general. What form of good for- 
j tune do you predict for me ? ’ 

‘ I pretend to no gift of prophecy. I only profess the 
power of insight. I can read what men are — not what is 
going to happen to them ; but as in many^ cases character 
is fate, I have been able to hazard some shrewd guesses 
about the future.’ 

‘ And in my case, what are your guesses ? ’ 

‘ I would rather not tell you.’ 

‘ The outlook is not satisfactory, then ? ’ 




38 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 

‘ Not altogether. The character of a man who ateight- 
and-twenty can contemplate suicide as the choice way out ' 
of his embarrassments is not a character that promises 
well. I am frank, you see.' 

‘ Vastly frank.’ 

‘ Don’t be angry,’ laughed Jermyn ; ‘ I pretend to be no 
hero myself, and if I were very hard up, or very much 
bored, I daresay I, too, might think of a bullet or a dose 
of prussic acid. Only that kind of idea argues a char- 
acter at once weak and selfish. The man who takes 
his own life i-uns away from the universal battle, and 
shows a selfish indifference to those he leaves behind, in 
whose minds the memory of his death will be a lasting 
pain.’ 

‘My poor* mother,’ sighed Hillersdon, recognizing the 
truth of this assertion. 

‘You would have killed yourself because you were 
ennuied and unhappy ; because you have wasted oppor- 
tunities, and given the best years of your life to a hope- 
less passion. Your reasons were not strong enough ; and 
even if I were not here to demonstrate your folly, I think 
your hand must have faltered at the last moment, and you 
would have asked yourself — Is the outlook so very black 
after all ? Does not one gleam of light pierce the dark- 
ness ? ’ 

‘ The outlook is as black as pitch,’ answered Hillersdon, 
expanding under the influence of the wineTie had drunk 
so freely, ready now to talk to this acquaintance of a day 
as if he were his bosom friend and companion of years; 

‘ there is not a gleam of light, not one ! I have wasted j 
my chances ; I have frittered away whatever talent or j 
capacity I may have possessed when I left the University, j 
I am a dependant upon a father who can ill afford me the j 
shabbiest maintenance, and to whom I ought to be a help’ 
rather than a burden. I have been — and must be as longi 
as I live — the slave of a woman who exacts servitude andj 
gives nothing — whose heart and mind after years of closest 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


39 


association are still mysteries to me ; who will not own 
that she loves me, yet will not let me go/ 

‘ Mrs. Champion is a remarkably clever woman/ said 
Jermyn, coolly ; ^ but there are depths which you have 
never fathomed under that calm and virtuous surface. 
Leave her for another divinity, and you will see of what 
she is capable. If that hopeless attachment is your only 
trouble, I snap my fingers at the necessity of suicide. A 
day, an hour may bring you face to face with a woman 
whose influence will make you forget Edith Cham- 
pion/ 

‘ You have no right to make free with Mrs. Champion’s 
name. How do you know that she has any influence 
over my life ? ’ 

' I know what all the world knows — ^your world of May 
Fair and Belgravia, Hyde Park and South Kensington — 
and I know what I read in the lady’s face. A dangerous 
woman for you, Mr. Hillersdon ; witness these wasted 
years of which you complain. But there are women as 
fair, to love whom would be a less abject servitude. Do 
you remember the vision that Mephistopheles showed 
Faust in the witch’s kitchen ? ’ 

‘ Gretchen at her spinning wheel.’ 

' Gretchen at her wheel belongs to the opera, I fancy. 
The vision Faust saw in the witch’s looking-glass was the 
vision of abstract beauty. You may remember that when 
he sees Gretchen in the street there is no recognition of 
that supernal face he had just seen in the glass. He was 
only caught by a pretty girl tripping modestly by, going 
home from church. The vision may have been Aphrodite 
or Helen, for aught we know, A clever trick, no doubt, 
that vision in the glass. Look yonder, Hillersdon, look 
at that face there, known to you in the past — the face of 
a girl steeped in povert}", beau if ul as a dream, yet no 
better oflf in the world for her loveliness. Lock at that 
fragile form bending over a sewing machine, our modern 
substitute for the spinning wheel. Look at me, Hillers- 


40 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


don/ repeated Jermyn, fixing him with those cold, calm, 
blue eyes, from which there radiated a sudden thrilling 
inriuence that steeped Gerard Hillersdon’s senses in a 
dreamy light, as of worlds and atmospheres unknown ; 
‘ and now look yonder/ 

He waved his hand carelessly toward the inner room, 
where in the subdued light Hillersdon saw the figure of 
a girl, shadowy, dim, and vague at first, and then develop- 
ing gradually from pale grey shadow into luminous dis- 
tinctness. The face was turned to him, but the eyes saw 
him not; they gazed sadly out into space, full of hope- 
less melancholy, while the hands moved monotonously 
backwards and forwards across the table of a sewing 
machine. A girl in a grey cotton frock, sitting at work 
at a sewing machine. That was the vision Gerard Hill- 
ersdon saw against the dark background of Mr. Jerrnyn’s 
library ; but the girls pinched and pallid face was as 
beautiful in form as the face of Raffaelle's loveliest Ma- 
donna, and in its profound melancholy there was a sweet- 
ness that melted his heart. Something, too, in that fair 
Gretchen-like countenance struck him as strangely famil- 
iar. He had seen the face before, not in a picture or in a 
statue, but in common-place every day life. When or 
where he knew not. 

Jermyn threw his half-smoked cigar up into the air, 
and burst into his elfin laugh. The vision faded on the 
instant, as if he had laughed it away. 

‘ There is your modern Gretchen/ he said, ‘ a poor 
little sempstress, slaving from dawn to dark for something 
less than daily bread, as beautiful as a Greek goddess, and 
virtuous enough to prefer cold and hunger to degradation. 
There is your true type of a nineteenth century Gretchen. 
How would you like to be Faust ? ’ 

‘ I should like to possess a share of Faust’s power. Not 
to betray Gretchen, but to secure my own happiness.’ 

‘ Aund what is your idea of happiness ? ’ asked Jermyn, 
lighting a fresh cigar. 


The Worldj The Flesh, and The Devil, 


41 


‘ Wealth/ answered Hillersdon quickly. ‘For a man 
who has lived under the goad of poverty, who has felt 
day by day, and hour by hour, the torment of being 
poorer than his fellow-men, there can be but one idea of 
I bliss — money and plenty of it. From my school days 
upwards I have lived among men better otf than myself. 
At the University I got into trouble because I exceeded 
; my allowance. My father could just afford to give me 
two hundred a year. I spent from three to four hundred ; 

I but the excess, though it caused no end of trouble at 
home, left me still a pauper among men who spent a 
thousand. I had been sent to an expensive college and 
told to economize ; to enjoy all the privileges of contact 
with men of rank and position, to be among them but not 
of them. I happened to be popular, and so could not al- 
together seclude myself from my fellow-men. I was 
pinched and harassed at every turn, and yet plunged in 
debt, and a malefactor to my family. I came to London, 
studied for the bar, eat my dinners, wasted my father’s 
substance on fees, and never got a brief. I wrote a book 
which won instantaneous success, and for the moment I 
was rich. I thought I had opened a gold mine, bought 
my mother a pair of diamond earings which she did not 
want, and sent my father a fine set of Jeremy Taylor, 
which he had been longing for ever since I could remem- 
ber. I fell in love with a beautiful girl, who reciprocated 
my affection, but was not allowed to marry a man whose 
only resources were in his inkstand. She was not incon- 
solable, and our engagement was no sooner broken than 
she married a man old enough to be her father, and rich 
enough to make her a personage in the smart world. My 
next book, written while I was writhing under the sting 
of this disappointment was a dead failure. I had no 
heart to begin another book. I have lived since, as a 
good many young men contrive to live in this great city, 
from hand to mouth, and the emptiness and hopelessness 
of my life have been known to me for a long time. Do 
C 


42 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


you wonder that I began to think actual nothingness 
better than this middle state between life and death — 
this perpetual weariness of an inane and purposeless ex- 
istence ? ' 

‘And you think that wealth would open up a new 
future, and that life would be no longer aimless ? ’ 

‘Wealth means power,’ answered Hillersdon. ‘With 
wealth and youth no man should be unhappy, unless 
racked by physical pain. A rich man is master of the 
universe.’ 

‘ Yes, but while he enjoys the power wealth gives, his 
life is ebbing. Every day of enjoyment, every ardent 
hope satisfied, every extravagant wish realized is a nail 
in his coffin. The men who live longest are men of mod- 
erate means — not worried by poverty nor elated by wealth 
— men in whose obscure and retired lives society takes 
very little interest — scholars, thinkers, inventors, some of 
them perhaps, whom the world hears of only after they 
are dead — men who think, and dream, and reason, but 
experience nothing of life’s feverish movement or man’s 
fiercer passions. Do you remember Balzac’s story of the 
Peau de Chagrin ? ’ 

‘Not very clearly. It was one of the first French 
novels I read ; a kind of fairy tale, I think.’ 

‘ It is more an allegory than a fairy tale. A young 
man, tired of life, like you, is on the brink of suicide — 
has made up his mind to die, as you made up your mind 
to-day— when, to waste the time betwixt afternoon and 
night, he goes into a bric-a-brac shop and turns over the 
wonders of worlds old and new. Here, amiidst treasure 
of art and relics of extinct civilizations, he finds the 
queerest curio of all in the person of the bric-a-brac 
dealer, a man who boasts of his century and more of life, 
the quiet passionless life of the thinker. This man shows 
him the Peau de Chagrin, the skin of a wild ass, hanging 
against the wall. With that talisman he offers to make 
the intending suicide richer, more powerful and more re- 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil, 


43 


nowned than the King of the French. ‘ Read/ he cries, 
and the young man reads a Sanscrit inscription whose 
letters are so interwoven in the metallic lustre of the skin 
that no knife can eradicate the faintest line. The Sans- 
crit translated runs thus : — 

If you possess me you possess all, 

But your life will be mine. Wish, 

And your wishes will be fulfilled. 

But rule your * wishes by 
Your life. At every wish 
I shall shrink like 
Your days. Woulds t 
Have me. 

Take. 

‘This inscription is the allegory of life. The old man 
told the youth how he had offered the talisman to many, 
but how, though one and all laughed at its possible in- 
fluence over their future destinies, all? had refused to 
traffic with that unknown power. And for the owner of 
the talisman, why had he never tested its value ? The 
old man answered that question by expounding his theory 
of life/ 

‘ And what was his theory ? ’ 

‘ “ The mystery of human life lies in a nutshell/’ said 
the centenarian. ‘‘ The life of action and the life of 
passion drain the sources of existence. To will, to do, to 
desire ardently is to die. With every quickening of the 
pulse above normal health, with every tumult of the 
heart, with every fever of the brain, fired by ardent 
hopes and conflicting wishes, a shred is torn off the fab- 
ric of a man’s life. The men who live to age like mine 
are the men whose passions and desires, ambitions and 
greed of power have been rigidly suppressed, the men of 
calm and contemplative temperament, in whom mind 
rises superior to heart and senses, who are content to 
reason, to know, to see and understand the world in 
which they live.” And that old man was right. There 


44 


The World j The Flesh, and The Devil, 

is a hidden meaning in that sentence of Holy Writ — The 
race is not to the swift. If you would live long take life 
largo, not presto.' 

‘ Who cares for length of years ? ' exclaimed Gerard 
Hillersdon. ‘ What a man wants is to live, not to crawl 
for a century on the face of this planet, afraid to lift his 
head from the earth lest a thunderbolt should strike him. ^ 
I wish I could stroll into the bric-a-brac shop and find ' 
the peau de chagrin.^ I would be content to see the talis- ] 
man dwindle daily if every diminution marked an hour j 
of happiness, a wish realized.' I 

‘Well, I suppose that is the only philosophy of life I 
congenial to a young mind,' said Jermyn, lightly. ‘ The 
centenarian who never really lived boasts of length of 
days, and cheats himself with the idea that he has had 
the best of the bargain ; but to live for ten glad, reckless 
years must be better than to vegetate for a century.' 

‘Infinitely better,' said Hillersdon, getting up in a 
fever of excitement, and beginning to walk about the 
room, looking at this and that, the bronze idols, the en- 
amelled vases, and old ivory carvings in the niches and 
recesses of a Bombay black-wood cabinet. 

‘ You have the peau de chagrin hidden somewhere in 
your rooms, perhaps,' he suggested, laughingly, ‘ or at any 
rate some talisman which enables you to make light of 
lif® to see a jest where other men see a problem only to 
be solved by death.' 

‘No, I have no talisman. I have nothing but will — 
will strong enough to conquer passion — and insight by i 
which I can read the mystery of mankind. You who 
have a stronger individuality— a passionate, exacting 
personality, an intolerable ego which must be satisfied 
somehow — are created to suffer. I am created to enjoy. 
For me life, as you say is a jest.' 

‘ So^ it was for Goethe's devil,' answered Hillersdon. 

I believe there is a touch of the diabolical in your com- 
position, and that you have about as much heart and 


The World j The Flesh, and The Devil. 


45 


conscience as Mephistopheles. However, I am beholden 
to you for your persistence in bringing me here to-night, 
for you have amused me, mystified me, provoked my 
curiosity, and routed thoughts which I confess were of 
the darkest/ 

‘ Didn’t I tell you a supper and a bottle of wine would 
be your best counsellor,’ exclaimed Jermyn, laughing. 

‘ But the dark thoughts will be back again in a day or 
two, no doubt, since you have no talisman to offer me 
which will pour gold into my empty pockets, and you do 
not even propose to buy my shadow. I would run the 
risk of being as uncomfortably conspicuous as Peter 
Schlemihl, for the same power to create illimitable masses 
of sterling coin.’ 

‘Ah, those are old stories — allegories, all, be assured. 
If I were to say I saw the promise of fortune on that 
perplexed brow of yours you would laugh at me. All I 
ask is that if Fortune does pour her gifts into your lap 
you will remember that I bade you tarry at the gate of 
death.’ 


CHAPTER III. 


“We are such stufif as dreams are made of.” 

HE domes and steeples of the great city, 
towers and warehouses, roofs old and new, 
showed dark against a safiron sky, as Gerard 
Hillersdon set his face to the west in the cool 
stillness of early morning. He had drunk 
enough and talked enough to exalt his spirits with 
an unwonted elation, as if life and the world were 
new and all old and troublesome things cast off like a 
slough, and flung behind him into the universal dust-heap 
men call the Past. There is no Nepenthe like a night’s 



46 


The Worldy The Fleshy and The Devil, 


debauch for obliterating the consciousness of trouble. 
Unhappily the effect is but transient, and Memory will 
resume her sway. In this summer dawning Gerard 
walked through the empty streets with a tread as light 
as if his youth had never been shadowed by a care. In 
this mood of his he accepted Justin Jermyn as a serious 
fact, a man of unusual gifts and faculties; a man who by 
fair means or foul had plucked him by the sleeve and 
held him back upon the brink of a dark gulf which he 
shuddered to think upon. 

‘ To be or not to be ? ' he muttered, slackening his steps 
in the morning solitude of Lincoln’s Inn, where there 
were faint odours of foliage and flowers freshened by the 
dews of night. ‘ To be or not to be ? I was a fool to 
think that my choice was inevitable. Faust had the 
poison at his lips, when the Easter joy bells stayed his 
hand. And after that burst of Heavenly gladness — and 
after that thrilling chorus, ‘ Christ is risen,’ came the 
fiend with his worldly-wise philosophy, and his gifts of 
wealth and power. Is the influence that stayed my hand 
of Heaven or of hell, I wonder ? ’ 

His thoughts reverted to the face of the girl at the 
sewing-machine. He was in no mood to trouble himself 
as to the nature of the vision he had seen ; whether it 
were hypnotic, or some juggler’s trick produced by 
mechanical means. It was of the face that he thought, 
for it was a familiar face ; a face out of the long-ago ; 
and he tried in vain to fix it in his memory. It floated 
there, vaguely mixed with the vision of his vanished 
boyhood — a dream of summer and sunny days, of woods 
and waters, in the far-off west, which seemed as another 
and half-forgotten world in the midst of this gray, smoke- 
stained city. 

He let himself into the dark and airless lodging-house 
passage, with his latchkey, a privilege he could scarcely 
hope to enjoy many days longer unless he could comply 
with, or compromise, the demand in his landlord’s letter. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


47 


Yet even this idea of being turned out of doors seemed 
hardly to trouble him this morning. At the worst he 
could go down to his father s Rectory, and bury himself 
among green leaves and village faces. And if he must 
be bankrupt, see his name in the Gazette, shameful as 
the thing would seem to the rural rector and his wife, 
he would not be the first. Among the youthful scions of 
the nobility bankruptcy is as common as scarlet-fever ; 
nay, almost as inevitable as measles. 

His sitting-room and the adjoining bed-room looked 
shabbier than usual in the clear morning light, after those 
luxurious rooms of Justin Jermyn's. The furniture had 
been good enough once upon a time, for its specific pur- 
pose — brass bedstead, maple-suite in the bedroom, wal- 
nut-wood and cretonne in the sitting-room — but it had 
grown shabby and squalid with the wear and tear of 
successive lodgers ; and the landlord, crippled by bad 
debts, had never been rich enough to renew the cretonne, 
or improve upon the philistinism of the walnut-wood. 
A sordid den, repulsive to the eye of a man with any feel- 
ing for the beautiful. 

Hillersdon was tired and exhausted, but slumber was 
far from his eyelids, and he knew it was useless to go to 
bed while his brain was working with a forty-horse 
power, and his temples were aching with sharp neural- 
gic pain. He flung himself into an arm-chair, lighted a 
cigar which Jermyn had thrust upon him at parting, and 
looking idly round the room. 

There were some letters upon the table, at least half a 
dozen, the usual thing no doubt ; bills and threatening 
letters from lawyers of obscure address, calling his atten- 
tion to neglected applications from tradesmen. Common 
as such letters were, it was alw;ays a shock to him to find 
that the bland and obliging purveyor had handed him 
over to the iron hand of the solicitor. He was in no 
haste to open those letters, which would supply so many 
items in his schedule, perhaps, a few days later. Insol- 


48 


2%6 World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 

vency had been staring him in the face for a long tin^e^ 
and there was no alternative between Death and the 
Gazette, 

He finished his cigar, and then began to open his 
letters, deliberately, and as it were with a gloomy relish. 

The first was from the hatter, piteously respectful ; the 
second was from a solicitor in Bloomsbury, calling atten- 
tion to an account of three years standing with a Bond- 
street hairdresser, and the third and fourth were those 
uninforming yet significant documents, bill delivered, 
bearing date of the vanished years, and with a footnote 
requesting his earliest attention. Bill delivered. What 
value had he received for the sums demanded ? A scarf, 
or a pair of gloves, were casually pour passer le temps, a 
set of shirts, perhaps ordered, to please the tradesman 
rather than from any need of his own : and behold the 
man was clamouring for thirty-seven pounds odd shillings 
and pence. 

He opened the fifth letter, which announced itself 
upon the envelope as from Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and 
which, by the thickness of the paper and style of the ad- 
dress, was at least from a solicitor of position and re- 
spectability. Yet doubtless the tune was only the old 
tune, played upon a superior instrument. No, by heaven, 
it was not the old formula. 

‘ 190, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, W.C. 

‘July 17, 188—. 

‘ Sir, — If you are the same Mr. Gerard Hillersdon who 
in 1879 rescued an old gentleman from an approaching 
engine in the station at Nice, we have the honour to in- 
form you that our late client, Mr. Milford, banker, of 
London, Marseilles and Nice has bequeathed the bulk of 
his large fortune to you, as residuary legatee. Our client 
was of somewhat eccentric habits, but we have no reason 
to doubt his disposing power at the date of the will, nor 
do we at present apprehend any attempt to dispute the 
said will, since Mr. Milford leaves no near relations. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


49 


‘ We shall be glad to see you/ either here or at your 
own residence at your earliest convenience. 

‘ We have the honour to be, sir, 

‘ Yours, &c., &c., 
'Grafton and Cranberry/ 

Hillersdon turned the letter over and over in his hands, 
as if expecting that solid sheet of paper to change into a 
withered leaf under his touch, and then he burst into a 
laugh, as loud but not as joyous as Jermyn s gnome-like 
mirth. 

‘A trick/ he cried, ' a palpable trick, of the fate-reader, 
hypnotist, whatever he may please to call himself. A 
cruel jest, rather ; to mock parched lips with the promise 
of the fountain ; to exercise his fancy upon a destitute 
man. Well, I am not to be caught so easily. The churl 
whose remnant of life I saved at Nice was no wealthy 
banker. Til be sworn, but some impecunious wretch who 
was soured by his losses at Monte Carlo.’ 

He looked at his watch. Half-past five. A good 
many hours must pass before it would be possible to 
discover the existence or non-existence of Crafton and 
Cranberry, and the authenticity of the letter on the table 
there, where he had flung it, a most respectable-looking 
letter assuredly, if looks were anything of the purpose. 

'Easy enough for him to get a lawj^ers clerk to write 
on the firm’s paper/ he thought ; yet it were a hazardous 
thing to be done by any clerk, unless a discarded servant. 

' How did he know ? ’ mused Hillersdon. ' It was after 
midnight I told him my adventure at Nice, and this let- 
ter was delivered by the last post at ten o’clock.’ 

Not impossible, though, for Jermyn to have heard of 
the old hunks at the Nice Station from Gilbert Watson, 
Hillersdon’s friend, who had seen the end of the adven- 
ture, and heard the old man clamouring for his umbrella. 
Watson was a man about town, and might have been in 
contact with Jermyn, who was a seasonable celebrity, 
and went everywhere. 


60 


The World, The Flesh, and 2 he Devil, 


He threw himself, dressed, upon his bed, slept a 
troubled sleep in briefest intervals, and lay awake for 
the rest of the time between half-past five and half-past 
eight, when his servant — an elderly man and old retainer, 
who had married and out-lived the Rectory nurse — 
brought him his early cup of tea and prepared his bath. 
He was dressed and out of doors by half-past nine, and a 
hansom took him to Lincoln’s Inn Fields before the 
stroke of ten. 

The office was evidently just opened, a most respect- » 
able office. An elderly clerk showed Mr. Hillersdon into 
a handsome waiting-room, where the newly cut news- 
papers were systematically arranged upon a massive ma- 
hogany office table. Neither of the principals had ar- 
rived from their West End houses. 

Gerard’s impatience could not brook the delay. 

‘ Do you know anything about this letter ? ’ he asked, 
showing the open document. 

‘ I ought to, sir, for it was I who wrote it,’ answered 
the gray-haired clerk. 

' By way of a practical joke, I suppose,’ said Hillers- 
don, grimly, ‘ to oblige a facetious friend. 

‘ Messrs. Grafton and Cranberry do not deal in practi- 
cal jokes, sir,’ replied the clerk, with dignity. ‘ I wrote 
that letter at Mr. Grafton’s dictation, and if you are the 
Mr. Hillersdon referred to it really ought to be a very 
pleasant letter for you to receive.’ 

" Very pleasant, if I could venture to take it seriously.’ 

‘ Why should you suspect a jest, sir, in so grave a mat- 
ter, and coming to you from a firm of undoubted respec- 
tability ? ’ 

Hillersdon sighed impatiently, and passed his hand 
across his forehead with a troubled gesture. How did he 
know that this scene of the lawyer’s office, the letter in 
his hand, the gray-haired, grave old clerk talking to him, 
were not part and parcel of some hypnotic vision, no 
more real than the figure of the girl at the sewing- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


51 


machine which those same eyes of his had looked at last 
night. He stood irresolute, incredulous, silent, while the 
old clerk defFerentially awaited his pleasure. The outer 
door opened as he stood there, and the measured footsteps 
of dignified middle-age crossed the hall. 

‘ Mr. Grafton,' said the clerk. ‘ He will be able to as- 
sure you that there has been no jesting, sir.' 

Mr. Grafton entered, tall, broad, bulky, imposing, fault- 
lessly dressed for his role of man of the world, not un- 
accustomed to society, and trustworthy family lawyer. 

^ Mr. Hillersdon, sir,' said the clerk. ‘ He has been dis- 
posed to think that the letter from the firm was a practi- 
cal joke.' 

‘ I am hardly surprised at your incredulity, Mr. Hillers- 
don,' said the solicitor, in an unctuous and comfortable 
voice, calculated to reassure clients, under darkest circum- 
stances. ^ The letter may well have taken your breath 
away. A romance of real life, ain't it ? A young man 
does a plucky thing on the spur of the moment, thinks 
no more about it, and some years after wakes up one 
morning to find himself — a very rich man,' concluded Mr. 
Grafton, pulling himself up suddenly, as if he might have 
used a much bigger phrase. ’ ‘ Kindly step into my pri- 
vate room. You can bring us the copy of the will, Gox- 
field.' 

The clerk retired, and Mr. Grafton ushered his latest 
client into a large front office, as imposing as his own 
figure. 

‘ Pray be seated, Mr. Hillersdon,' waving his hand to- 
wards a spacious arm-chair. ^ Yes, the whole story comes 
within the region of romance ; yet it is not the first time 
in testamentary history that a large fortune has been left 
to a stranger as a reward for some service barely acknow- 
ledged when it was rendered. Our late client, Mr. Mil- 
ford, was a very eccentric man. I’ll warrant now he took 
very little trouble to show his gratitude when you had 
hazarded your life in his service.' 


62 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘ The only trouble he took was about his umbrella, 
which he was vociferously anxious to recover/ 

‘ So like him, dear old man. A character, my dear sir, 
a character. You wouldn’t have given twenty shillings 
for the clothes he wore that day, I dare say — umbrella 
included/ 

‘ If clothes and umbrella had been on my premises, I 
would have given ten shillings to get them taken away.’ 

‘ Precisely,’ exclaimed the lawyer, with his genial 
chuckle. ‘ A very remarkable man. I doubt if he paid 
his tailor ten pounds a year — or five. Yet a man of large 
benevolence, a man whose left hand knew not what his 
right hand gave. But now we have got to come to the 
crucial question. Can you establish your identity with 
the Gerard Hillersdon whose name our late client took 
down from Mr. Gilbert Watson’s dictation in the station 
at Nice ?’ 

‘Very easily, I think. In the first place, I doubt if 
there is any other Gerard Hillersdon in the directory, as 
the name Gerard comes from my mother’s side of the 
house, and was not in the Hillersdon family before I was 
christened. Secondly, my friend Watson is now in Lon- 
don, and will readily identify me as the man about whose 
name your client inquired when I had left the platform. 
Thirdly, it would be easy, were further evidence needed, 
to establish the fact that I was residing at the Hotel 
Mont Fleuri, Cannes, at that date, and that I went to 
Nice on the first day of the Carnival/ 

‘ I do not think there will be any difficulty as to iden- 
tity,’ Mr. Crafton replied, suavely. ‘ Your present address 
is the same as that w^hich Mr. Watson gave our lamented 
client, and he further described you as the son of the 
Rector of Helmsleigh, Devon, a detail no doubt elicited 
by Mr. Milford’s inquiry. Here is a copy of the will. 
You would like to hear it, perhaps,’ suggested Mi-. Craf- 
ton, as the clerk entered and laid the document before 
him. 

‘ Very much/ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


53 


Mr. Craf ton read in a clear, distinct voice and with great 
unction. The will was dated six months previously, and 
was made at Nice. It opened with a long list of legacies, 
to old servants, to the clerks in three banking-houses, in 
London, Marseilles, Nice, to numerous charities, to Mr. 
Grafton and his partner, Mr. Cranberry. Hillersdon sat 
aghast as he heard thousands, and fives and tens of 
thousands, disposed of in this manner. To the Hospital 
for Children, Great Ormond-street, ten thousand; five 
thousand to St. George’s Hospital ; a thousand each to ten 
Orphanges ; five thousand to a Convalascent Hospital, 
three thousand to an Asylum for the Blind. Would there 
be anything left for him after this lavish distribution ? 
The passage in the will which concerned himself came at 
last, and was simple and brief. ‘ Finally, I bequeath the 
residue of my estate, real and personal, to Gerard Hill- 
ersdon, youngest son of the Rev. Edward Hillersdon, 
Rector of Helmsleigh, Devon, in recognition of his gen- 
erosity and courage in saving my life at the hazard of his 
own, in a railway station in this place, on the 14th of 
February, 1879 ; and I appoint James Grafton, solicitor, 
of the firm of Grafton and Cranberry, Lincolns Inn Fields, 
sole executor to this my will.’ 

' It is a noble reward for an action to which I never 
attached the slightest importance,’ said Hillersdon, pale 
to the lips with suppressed emotion. ‘ I sa w a young man 
at Newton Abbot do almost as much to save a dog, which 
was running up and down the line, scared by the porters 
who shouted at him. That young man jumped down 
upon the metals and picked up the dog in front of an en- 
gine — somebody else’s cur, not even his own property — 
and I — because in common humanity I plucked an old 
mam from instant death — yes, it was a near shave, I know, 
and might have ended badly for me — but it was only in- 
stinctive humanity, after all — and I am left a fortune. It 
is a fortune, I suppose ? ’ 

‘ Yes, Mr. Hillersdon, a large fortune — something over 


64 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 

two millions, consisting of lands, houses, Consols, bank 
stock, railway and other shares, together with the sole in- 
terest in the firm of Milford Brothers, bankers, of London, 
Marseilles, and Nice/ 

Hillersdon broke down utterly at this point. He turned 
his face from the spectators, principal and clerk, and fought 
hard with himself to keep back a burst of hysterical tears 
mixed with hysterical laughter. 

‘ It is too ridiculous,* he said, when he had recovered 
his sj^eech. ‘ Yesterday I was in the depths of despair. 
It is real, isn*t it ? * he asked piteously. ‘ You are not 
fooling me — you are real men, you two, not shadows ? 
This is not a dream ? * 

He struck his hand on the table so hard as to produce 
severe pain. 

‘ That is real, at any rate,* he muttered. 

Solicitor and clerk looked at each other dubiously. 
They were afraid their news had been too sudden, and 
that it had turned this possible client’s head. 

' Advance me some money,* asked Hillersdon suddenly. 

* Come, Mr. Crafton, give me your cheque for a good 
round sum, and when I have cashed that cheque I shall 
begin to believe in Mr. Milford’s will and in your good 
faith. I am up to my eyes in debt, and it will be a new 
sensation to be able to pay the most pressing of my cred- 
itors.’ 

Mr. Crafton had his cheque-book open and his pen 
dipped in the ink before the potential client had done 
speaking. 

‘ How much would you like ? * he asked. 

‘ How much ? Would five hundred be too large an ad- 
vance ? * 

' A thousand, if you like.* 

‘ No, five hundred will do. You will act as my solici- 
tors, I suppose — carry through the business for me. I 
am as ignorant of the law as the sheep who provide your 
parchment. I shall have to prove the will I suppose. I 
haven*t the faintest notion what that means.* 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


55 


‘ That will be my duty as executor. Our firm will 
settle all details for you, if you have no family lawyer 
whom you would prefer to employ/ 

‘ I don’t care a rap for our family lawyer. He has never 
done anything to endear himself to me. If you were 
good enough for Mr. Milford — my benefactor — ^you are 
good enough for me. And now I’ll go and cash this 
cheque/’ 

‘ Will you allow our messenger to do that for you ? ’ 

‘ Thanks, no. I like the sensation of a bank counter 
when I have money to receive. How will I have it ? A 
hundred in tens, the rest in fifties. How I shall astonish 
my worthy landlord ! Good day. Send for me when 
you want me to execute deeds, or sign documents/ 

He went out on the sunny pavement where the han- 
som was waiting for him ; went out with a step so light 
he was scarcely conscious of the pavement under his feet. 
Even yet he could scarcely divest himself of the idea that 
he was the sport of dreams, or of some strange jugglery 
worked by the man with the light-blue eyes and the un- 
canny laugh. ^ 

He drove to the Union Bank, in Chancery-lane, cashed 
his cheque, and then drove about the West-end, to tailor, 
hatter, hairdresser, hosier, paying fifties on account, or 
clearing up long-standing debts. He had only a hundred 
and fifty left when he got back to his lodgings, and out of 
this he paid his landlord eighty. Theresiduewasfor pocket- 
money. It was such a new sensation to have satisfied his 
creditors, that he felt as if he were made of air. He was 
convinced of the fact now. This thing was a reality. 
Fortune had turned her wheel — turned it so completely 
that he who had been at the bottom was now at the top. 
What would his own people think of this wonder that had 
befallen him A millionaire ! he, the thriftless son, who 
had until now been only a burden and a care to father and 
mother. He would not write. He would run down to 
Devonshire in a day or two, and tell them with his own 
lips. 


56 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


And but for Justin Jermyn’s interference he would have 
shot himself last night, and would have been lying stark 
and stiff this morning. Yet, no, the letter was there last 
night, at ten o’clock. Fortune had turned her wheel. 
The tidings of the bounty were waiting for him while he ^ 
was fooling in the Fate-reader’s room, the sport of a shallow 
trickster. 

‘ And yet he seemed to know,’ thought Hillersdon ; ' he 
hinted at a change of fortune — he led me to talk of the 
old man at Nice.’ 

He felt a sudden desire to see Jermyn, to tell him what 
had happened ; to talk over his monstrous luck ; to see 
what effect the news would have upon the Fate-reader. 
There were other people he wanted to see — most especially 
Edith Champion — but the desire to see Jermyn was the 
strongest of all. He got into a cab, and told the man to 
drive to Holborn. 

He hadn’t the remotest idea whereabouts in Holborn 
the old inn was situated, or whether in any adjacent 
thoroughfare. He dismissed the cab at Warwick Court, 
and went about on foot, in and out of dingy old gateways, 
and in the ' dusty purlieus of the law,’ as existent in the 
neighbourhood of Holborn ; but nowhere could he find 
gate-house, or semi-deserted inn that in any wise resem- 
bled the place to which Jermyn had taken him last 
night. 

After nearly two hours spent in this ineffectual explor- 
ation he gave up the search, and drove to the West-end, 
where, at Sensorium, a smart dilettante club of which he 
was a member, he hoped to hear Jermyn’s address. It 
was tea-time, and there were a good many men in the 
reading-room and adjacent smoke-room, and among them 
several of Hillersdon’s friends. 

He sat down in the midst of a little knot of acquain- 
tances, and ordered his tea at a table where he was wel- 
comed with marked cordiality — welcomed by men who 
knew not that they were welcoming a millionaire. 


!Phe World, The Flesh, and The Devit 


57 


‘ You know everything that's going on, Hill," he said, 
to one of these ; ‘ so of course you know Jermyn, the 
Fate-reader V 

‘ Intimately. It was I who secured him for Lady Frid- 
oline yesterday. He dosen't, as a rule, show himself at 
the common or garden party, but he went to Fridoline 
House to oblige me.' 

‘ Will you tell me where he lives ? ' 

‘ Nowhere ; he is much too clever to put an address on 
his card, like a commonplace individual. He is to be 
heard of here, or at the Heptachord. He is a member of 
both clu bs, though he rarely shows at either — but as to an 
address, a vulgar lodging-house address, like yours or 
mine. Pas si bette. If he put anything on his card it 
would be Styx, or Orcus.' 

‘ My dear fellow, I supped with him last night at his 
chambers.' 

‘ Then you know where they are ? ' 

‘ That is exactly what I do not know. Jermyn insisted 
upon my going to supper with him last night after the 
opera. We walked from Covent Garden to his chambers. 
We were talking all the time, and except that we passed 
through Queen-street and Lincoln's Inn Fields, I haven’t 
an idea as to what direction we took, or where the cur- 
ious shabby old inn is situated.' 

Youth's frank laughter greeted this avowal. 

' Then all I can say, my dear Hillersdon, is that you 
were rather more on than a man generally is when he 
leaves the opera. You were very lucky to get out of Bow- 
street.’ 

" Would you be surprised to hear that I had taken no- 
thing stronger than Salutaris at dinner, and nothing 
whatever after dinner ? No, wine had nothing to do with 
my mental condition. Jermyn and I were talking. I 
was in a somewhat dreamy mood, and allowed myself to 
be piloted without taking any notice of the way we went. 
I will own that when I left him at four o'clock this morn- 


58 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


ing my head was not quite so clear, and London might 
be Bagdad for all I know of the streets and squares 
through which I made tracks for Piccadilly/ 

‘ So J ermyn entertains, does he ? ' exclaimed Roger 
Larose, the aesthetic architect, a man who always looked 
as if he had just stepped out of an eighteenth century 
framework, and elegant idler, ‘ this must be inquired in- 
to. He has never entertained me. Was your drunkenness 
a pleasant intoxication ? Was his wine irreproachable ?’ 

‘ More, it was irresistible. He gave me some old 
Madeira that was like melted gold, and his champagne 
had the cool freshness of a wild rose, an aroma as delicate 
as the perfume of the flower.’ 

' I believe he hypnotised you, and that there was no- 
thing ; or perhaps bread and cheese and porter,’ said 
Larose. ‘ Where are you going, and what are you going 
to do this afternoon ? I’ve some Hurlingham vouchers in 
my pocket. Shall we go and see the polo match, or shoot 
pigeons, and dine on the lawn ? ’ 

A thrill went through Hillersdon’s heart at the thought 
that yesterday, had Larose made such a proposition, he 
would have been obliged to decline, with whatever excuse 
he might invent on the spur of the moment. Yesterday 
the half-guinea gate-money and the risk of being let in 
to pay for the whole dinner would have made Hurling- 
hani forbidden ground. To-day he was eager to taste the 
new joy of spending money without one agonising 
scruple, one pang of remorse for extravagance that would 
hurt other people. 

‘ I am going to call on some ladies,’ he said. " If you 
can give me a couple of ladies’ tickets and one for my- 
self, I will meet you in time for dinner.’ 

‘ Do I know the ladies ? Is Mrs. Champion one of 
them X 
‘Yes.’ 

‘ Delightful — a parti carre. It is going to be a piping 
hot night. We will dine on the lawn, hear the chimes at 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


59 


midnight, stealing softly along the river from the great 
bell at Westminster. We will fancy we see fire-flies and 
that F ulhain is Tuscany — fancy ourselves in the Cascine 
Gardens, which are not half so pretty as Hurlingham or 
Barn Elms, when all is said and done. Get along with 
3"ou, Hillersdon. In spite of your debauch you are look- 
ing as happy as if you had just had a fortune left you.’ 

Gerard Hillersdon laughed somewhat hysterically, and 
hurried out of the club. He had not the courage to tell 
anyone what had happened to him — not yet. That word 
hypnotism frightened him, even after this seemingly sub- 
stantial evidence of his good luck. The lawyer s office, 
the Bank, the notes, and tradesmen’s receipts ! Might not 
all these be part and parcel of the same hypnotic trance. 
He pulled a bundle of receipted accounts out of his 
pocket. Yes, those were real, or as real as anything can 
be to a man who dares not be sure that he is not 
dreaming. 

He drove to Hertford street. Mrs. Champion was at 
home, and alone. Her carriage was at the door ready to 
take her to the park. Mrs. Gresham was again engaged 
in the cause of the Anglican Orphans, serving tea and 
cake to the shilling ticket people on the second day of 
the Bazaar at the Riding School, and was to be called for 
at six o’clock. 

Mrs. Champion was sitting in a darkened drawing-room 
in an atmosphere of tropical flowers, dresvsed in India 
muslin, looking deliciously reposeful and cool, after the 
glare of the streets. She looked up from her book with a 
little start. of surprise at hearing Hillersdon’s name. 

* I thought you were half way to Germany by 
this time,’ she said, evidently not illpleased at his return, 
as it were a bird fluttering back to the open door of his 
cage, ‘ but perhaps you missed your train and are going 
to-morrow.’ 

" No, Mrs. Champion, I changed my mind, and I am 
not going at all.’ 


60 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘ How nice/ she said sweetly, laying aside her book 
and prepared to be confidential. ‘Was it to please me 
you stayed t 

He made up his mind he must tell her. His mouth 
grew dry and hot at the very thought ; but he could not 
keep the knowledge of his altered fate from this woman 
who had been, who was still, perhaps, the other half 
of his soul. 

‘For once in my life/ he said quietlj^, ‘or let me 
say for once since I first met you — ^your wish was not my 
only law. Something has happened to me — to change 
my life altogether since yesterday/ 

That hoarse, broken voice, the intensity of his look 
scared her, and her imagination set off at a gallop. 

‘ You are engaged to be married,’ she cried, rising 
suddenly out of her low, luxurious chair, straight as a 
dart and deadly pale. ‘These things always end so. You 
have been loyal to me for years, and now you have 
grown weary, and you want a wife —Elaine instead of 
Guinevere — and you meant to run away to Germany and 
break the thing to me in a letter — and then you changed 
your mind and took courage to tell me with your own 
false lips/ 

This burst of passion — her white face and flashing eyes 
were a revelation to him. He had thought her as calm 
and cold as a snow figure that children build in a garden; 
and behold, he had been playing with fire all this time. 

He was standing by her side in an instant, holding her 
icy hands, drawing her nearer to him. 

‘ Edith, Edith, can you think so poorly of me ? En- 
gaged, when you know there is no other woman I care for 
— ^have ever cared for. Engaged, in a day, in an hour ! 
Have I not given you my life ? What more could I do ? ’ 

‘ You are not ! Oh, thank God. I could bear anything 
but that.’ 

‘ And yet— and yet — you hold me at arm’s length/ he 
said fondly, with his lips near hers. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


61 


She was the snow figure again in a moment, standing 
before him in her matronly dignity, cold, proud, unap- 
proachable. 

' I was foolish to put myself in a passion,’ she said, 
‘and after all whenever you want to marry I shall have 
no right to hinder you. Only I should like to know 
your plans in good time, so that I may accustom myself 
to the idea. The horses have been at the door ever so 
long, and that hard-working Rosa will be waiting for me. 
Will you come for a drive round the park ? ’ 

‘ I shall be charmed ; but I want you and Mrs. Gresham 
to dine with me at Hurlingham. We can go on there 
when you have done your park.’ 

‘I don’t care a straw for the park. Let us go straight 
to Hurlingham and see the Polo. But I am so carelessly 
diessed; shall I do, do you think, or shall I put on a 
smarter gown ? ’ 

She stood up before him as in a cloud of muslin and 
lace, a gown so flowing and graceful in its draping over 
bust and hips, that it might have been water clothing a 
nymph at a fountain. 

‘ Your careless costume is simply adorable. Only be 
sure and bring a warm wrap, for we may be sitting late 
upon the lawn.’ 

She touched a spring bell and her maid appeared with 
a white Gainsborough hat and a pair of long suede gloves. 
Wraps were sent for, the butler was informed that his 
mistress would not dine at home, and the barouche drove 
off with Gerard on the front seat, opposite Mrs. Cham- 
pion. 

‘ What can have happened to change your life, if you 
are not going to be married ? ’ she asked, as they turned 
into Piccadilly. ‘You quite mystify me. I hope it is 
nothing bad — no misfortune to any of your people ?’ 

‘No, it is something distinctly good. An eccentric old 
man, whom I was once so fortunate as to oblige, has left 
me the bulk of his fortune,’ 


62 


Tlie World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘ I congratulate you/ she said, but there was a troubled 
look in her face that surprised him. Surely she ought to 
have been glad. 

‘ Does that mean that you are a rich man ? ’ she asked 
after a pause. 

‘Yes, I am a rich man.' 

‘ How rich ? ’ 

‘ As rich as anybody need care to be. I am told that 
the fortune left me is something over two millions.' 

‘ Two millions of francs ? ' 

‘Two millions sterling.' 

‘ Good Heavens ! Why Champion is a pauper com- 
pared with you. This is too absurd !' 

‘ It does savour of the ridiculous, I admit/ said Hil- 
lersdon, somewhat piqued by her manner of treating the 
subject. ‘ Poverty was my metier no doubt. I was born 
to be a hanger-on upon this great world, to taste its 
pleasures by the favour of other people ; to visit in smart 
houses on sufferance ; to live in a shabby lodging and 
find my warmest welcome at a club.' 

‘Two millions ! ' repeated Edith, ‘ I am sure Frederick 
has not as much. Two millions ! you will have to marry 
now, of course.' 

‘ Have to ! Why should I be constrained to marry just 
when I have the means of enjoying a bachelor's life ? ' 

‘ You will be made to marry, I tell you/ she answered 
impatiently. ‘You don’t know what women are who 
have daughters to marry. You don’t know what girls 
are — hardened worldly girls in their third or fourth sea- 
son — who want to secure a rich husband. You can’t pos- 
sibly estimate the influences that will be brought to bear 
upon you. All the single women in London will be at 
your feet.' 

‘ For the sake of my two millions. Are women so mer- 
cenary ? ' 

‘ They are obliged to be/ answered Edith Champion. 
‘ We live in an age in which poverty is utterly intolerable. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


63 


One must be rich or miserable. Do you think I would 
have consented to marry Mr. Champion, In spite of all 
the pressure my family put upon me, if I had been brave 
enough to bear poverty with you. No, to be well born 
means the necessity of wealth. One's birthright is to 
belong to the smart world, and there to be poor is to be a 
social martyr. I have often envied the women born at 
Camberwell or Islington, the women who go to the butchers 
to buy the dinner, and who wear cotton gloves.' 

‘ Yes, there is an independence in those lower depths. 
One can be poor and unashamed, if one belongs to the 
proletariat. But be assured, my dear Mrs Champion, 
that I shall not fall a victim to a manoeuvring mother or 
an enterprising young lady. I shall know how to enjoy 
wealth and freedom.' 

Edith sighed. Would not the independence of unlimit- 
ed wealth tempt her slave to throw off the yoke ? 
Could he ever be again — he the millionaire — what he had 
been to her ? Would he be content to dance attendance 
upon her, to be at her beck and call, to be an inevitable 
guest at all her parties, to hand tea cups at her afternoons 
when he was perhaps the only man present, to fetch and 
carry for her, find her the newest books in French and 
German, taste them for her before she took the trouble to 
read them, keep her posted in the gossip of the clubs, so 
far as such gossip was fitting for a lady to know ? For 
the last three years he had been her second self, had sup- 
plemented her intellect, and amused her leisure. . But 
would he be content to play the satellite now that wealth 
would give him power to be a planet, with moons and 
satellites of his own ? 

‘He will marry,' she told herself. ‘There is no use 
talking about it. It was easy to keep him in leading 
strings while he was too poor to be worth a single wo- 
man's attention. But now he will be forced into marriage. 
The thing is inevitable,' 

The carriage stopped at the Biding School, and the 


64 


The WotI(^, The Flesh and The Devil, 


footman went in to look for Rosa Gresham, who came 
tripping out presently, airily dressed as befitted the sum- 
mer solstice, and somewhat purple as to complexion. 

‘ We are going to take dinner at Hurlingham,’ said 
Edith. 

‘ How awfully delicious. I am deadbeat. The shilling 
people were too horrid, staring, and pushing, and squab- 
bling for their right change, and gobbling cake in a truly 
revolting manner. I don’t think our stall can have 
cleared its expenses. How well you are looking this 
afternoon, Mr. Hillersdon, and yesterday I thought you 
looked awful, so hollow under the eyes, so pale and hag- 
gard.’ 

‘ I thought I was going away, to part company with all 
cared for,’ said Gerard. 

‘ And now you are not going ? ’ 

‘ No,’ Edith answered, with a laugh which was not alto- 
gether joyous. ‘ He may well look different. Though 
form and feature are unchanged, he is a diflferent man. 
Rosa, you are sitting opposite a millionaire.’ 

‘ Heavens ! do you really mean it, or is it a joke ? ” 

‘ I hope and believe that it is serious. I have the as- 
surance of a dry-as-dust solicitor that there is all this 
money in the world, and that it belongs to me. And I 
cannot even thank the man who gave it me, for the hand 
that gave it is in the dust.’ 

‘ And to think that you never came to our Bazaar, never 
gave.a thought, in the midst of your prosperity, to the 
Anglican Orphans ! ’ exclaimed Rosa. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


65 


CHAPTER IV. 



LIFE UPON NEW LINES. 

HE season of nightingales was past, but there 
were plenty of roses still, and it was pleasant 
to sit on the lawn and hear the plash of the 
tide, and see the stars come slowly out, large 
and red in the smoke-tainted atmosphere, above 
the tufted elms of Hurlingham. Roger Larose 
talked his best in that dim light, and Gerard, who 
had been silent and moody at the little dinner in 
Hertford-street yesterday, was to-night as joyous as the 
thrushes that were singing their evening hymn in the 
cool dusk of deserted shrubberies. And all the difference 
— the difference between despair and gladness, between 
gloom and mirth, between eager delight in life and utter 
weariness of spirit, had been brought about by the most 
sordid factor in the sum of man’s existence — filthy lucre. 

No matter the cause when the effect was so enchanting. 
Gerard’s elation communicated itself to his companions. 
More champagne was consumed at that little table in the 
garden than at any other party of four in the club, and yet 
the house was crowded with diners, and there were other 
groups scattered here and there, banqueting under the roof 
of heaven. _ Lightest talk and gladdest laughter beguiled 
the hours till nearly midnight, when Mrs. Gresham re- 
membered an early service at a ritualistic temple in Hol- 
bqrn, and entreated to be taken home at once, so that she 
might secure certain hours of pious seclusion before dawn. 

Gerard had requested that no word of his altered for- 
tunes should be spoken before Roger Larose. He and 
the rest of the world would hear all about his good luck 
in due course; but he shrank from the idea of endless 


66 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


congratulations, very few of them cordial and disinter- 
ested. Time enough when the inexorable Illustrated 
London Newshsidi acquainted society with the particulars 
of Ebenezer Milford's will. 

The two women had behaved with discretion, and al- 
though Larose wondered a little at the superb indifference 
with which Hillersdon paid for the dinner, and left the 
change of a ten pound note to the waiter, knowing that 
of late his friend had suffered from youth’s common mal- 
ady of impecuniousness, he ascribed this freedom only to 
some windfall which afforded temporary relief. 

On their way to the carriage Mrs. Gresham contrived 
to get Hillersdon all to herself, while Larose and Mrs. 
Champion walked in advance of them. 

‘ Dear Mr. Hillersdon, a fortune such as yours is a vast 
responsibility for a Christian,’ she began solemnly. 

‘ I haven’t looked at it in that light, Mrs. Gresham, but 
I own that it will take a good deal of spending.’ 

‘ It will, and the grand thing will be to secure good 
results for your outlay. There is one good thing I should 
like to introduce to your notice before you are beset by 
appeals from strangers. The chief desire of my husband’s 
heart, and I may say also of mine, is to enlarge our Parish 
Church, now altogether inarchitectural and inadequate to 
the wants of the increased congregation which his 
eloquence and strength of character have attracted. In 
the late incumbent’s time the church used to be half 
empty, and mice ran about in the gallery. We want to 
build a transept which would absorb the existing chancel, 
and to add a new and finer chancel. It will be a matter 
of several thousands, but we have many promises of help 
if any benefactor would give a large donation — say a 
thousand guineas — to start the fund in a really substan- 
tial manner.’ 

‘ My dear Mrs. Gresham, you forget that lama parson’s 
son. Dog doesn’t eat dog, you know. I have no doubt 
my father’s church needs enlargement. I know it ha^ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


67 


a pervading mouldiness which calls for restoration. I 
must think of him before I start your fund ? 

‘ If you have not yet learnt how to spend your fortune 
you at least know how to take care of it, Mr. Hillersdon,” 
said Mrs, Gresham, with some asperity, and then recover- 
ing herself she continued airily. ‘ It was rather too bad 
of me perhaps to plague you so soon, but in the cause of 
the Church one must be importunate in season and out 
of season.’ 

They went through the house and waited in the vesti- 
bule while the carriage was brought to the door, and they 
all went back to town together in the barouche, and 
wound up with an after midnight cup of tea in Mrs. 
Champion’s delightful drawing-room, a labyrinth of lux- 
urious chairs, and palms, and Indian screens, and many- 
shaped tables, loaded with bric-a-brac of the costliest 
kind, glimmering faintly in the tempered light of amber- 
shaded lamps. 

‘ I like the French custom of midnight tea.’ said Larose. 
‘ It stretches the thread of life and shortens the night of 
the brain.’ 

Mrs. Gresham slipped away with ostentatious stealthi- 
ness after a hasty cup of tea ; but the others sat late, 
beguiled by the coolness and repose of the atmosphere, 
they three alone in the spacious room, with the perfume 
of tea-roses and shadow of dark tan- shaped leaves. Edith 
Champion was not a person of many accomplishments. 
She neither played nor sang, she neither painted pictures 
nor wrote verses, preferring that such things should be 
done for her by those who made it the business of their 
lives to do them well. But she was past-mistress of the 
decorative art, and there were few women in London or 
Paris who could approach her in the arrangement of a 
drawing-room. 

‘ My drawing-room is part of myself,’ she said ; ^ it 
reflects every shade of my character, and changes as I 
change.’ 


68 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


It was past one o'clock when Hillersdon apd Larose left 
Hertford-street. Piccadilly and the Park looked almost 
romantic in the moonlight. That cup of strong Indian 
tea had worked the usual effect of such potions, and both 
men were disinclined to go home to the uninviting seclu- 
sion of a lodging house bedroom. 

‘ Shall we go to the Petunia ? ' asked Larose, suggesting 
one of those after-midnight clubs where the society is 
decidedly mixed, and the champagne 50 per cent, dearer 
than at the Carlton or the Reform. 

‘ I detest the Petunia.' 

‘ The Small Hours, then ? They are giving really good 
music now, and we can get devilled bones or a lobster to 
our supper.' 

‘ Thanks, no ; I have had enough of society — even 
yours, which is always delightful. I am going for a long 
walk.' 

‘ That is a safe way of getting rid of me,' answered 
Larose. ‘ I never walk a furlong further than I am abso- 
lutely obliged. Hansom.' 

His lodgings were in George-street, Hanover-square, 
hardly a profitable shilling's worth, but it was not in 
Larose's temperament to consider shillings, until he had 
spent his last. There were intervals when he was with- 
out even the indispensable shilling for a hansom. 

" And a good thing too,' said one of his friends on hear- 
ing that hansoms were impossible, ‘ for then you are ob- 
liged to walk,' 

‘ Obliged,' cried Larose. ‘ Marry ! what should oblige 
me to do anything I don't like doing. No lesser person 
than the blind fury with the abhorred shears." When 
I can't afford cabs I take to my bed, lie abed all day read- 
ing novels, and get up at dusk and make a ground plan 
or sketch a fat^ade, in my dressing gown while the house- 
maid arranges my room. In these intervals I live upon 
biscuits and soda water, like Byron, and I emerge from my 
retirement a renovated and rejuvenated man. Thus do I 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


69 


make necessity my nurse, and profit by propulsion,’ con- 
cluded the poet-architect, who had a knack of sham quo- 
tation/ 

Hillersdon was glad to see the cab go swinging round 
into Bond-street with his vivacious friend. He wanted 
to be alone. He had taken a curious fancy into his head, 
which was to renew his search for the curious old inn 
where he had supped last night. He fancied that he 
might be able to hit upon the place if he approached it 
under the same conditions of darkness and the compara- 
tive solitude of night. He had failed utterly to find the 
old gateway in the glare of day ; yet the fabric must ex- 
ist somewhere within narrow limits. The whole thing — 
the house to which he was taken — the room in which he 
sat — the wine he drank— could not be a vision of the 
night. Granted that the face of the girl was a hallucina- 
tion put upon him by a clever mesmerist, other things 
must have been real. He could not have wandered in 
the streets of London for three or four hours in a mes- 
meric trance, full of vain imaginings. No, his memoiy 
of every detail, of every word they two had spoken, was 
too distinct to be only the memory of a dream. 

He walked to Bow-street, and from Bow-street went 
in the direction in which he had gone on the night before 
with Justin Jermyn. After he left Lincoln’s Inn Fields he 
tried to abstract his mind and to walk without thought 
of the way he was going, hoping that instinct might 
direct his steps in the way they had .gone last night, the 
same instinct by which a horse who has travelled a road 
only once will make every turn accurately upon a second 
journey. 

Instinct gave him no help. He wandered up and down 
Holborn, he explored the side streets that lie right and 
left of Gray’s Inn lane, he threaded narrow courts and 
emerged into Hatton Garden, he went back to the lane 
and hugged the dingy wall of Verulam Buildings, but no 
where did he see gate house or archway that bore the 


70 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


faintest resemblance to the gate house beneath which he 
passed last night. He began to think that he had been 
verily upon enchanted ground, and that the champagne he 
had drunk with Justin Jermyn was akin to that juice of 
the grape which Mephistopheles drew from an augur hole 
in a wooden table. There was devilry in it somewhere 
or somehow. 

He went back to his lodgings mystified and dispirited. 
He forgot that he was a millionaire, and over the scene 
of life there crept once again that dreary neutral hue 
which it had worn when he contemplated making a sud- 
den irrevocable exit from the stage. It was three o’clock 
before he got to Church court, half-past three before he 
flung himself wearily upon his jingling brazen bed. 

‘ I must move into better rooms on Monday,’ he said 
to himself, " and I must think about getting a house of 
my own. What is the use of wealth if one dosen’t enjoy it V 

There was very little enjoyment in him this summer 
morning, when the clear bright light stole into his room, 
and accentuated the shabbiness of the well-worn furni- 
ture, the hideous Philistinism of the mahogany wardrobe, 
with its Corinthian columns and tall strip of looking 
glass, in which he had critically surveyed his dress-suit 
the other evening, wondering how long it would holdout 
against the want of confidence among the west-end tailors. 
He could have as many dress-suits as he liked now, and 
could pay as much as the most egregious tailor cared to 
demand. He could live where he liked, start his house 
and his stable on a footing worthy of Nero or Domitian. 
He could do what he liked with his life, and the world 
would call it good, would wink at his delinquencies and 
flatter his follies. All that the world has of good lay in 
the hollow of his hand, for are not all the world’s good 
things for sale to the highest bidder ? He reflected upon 
this wondrous change in his fortunes, and yet in this 
morning hour of solitude and silence the consciousness of 
illimitable wealth could not bring him happiness. 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


71 


There had always been a vein of superstition in his na- 
ture, perhaps ; or superstitious fears would scarcely have 
troubled him in the midst of his prosperity. His double 
attempt to find Jermyn s chambers, and his double failure, 
had disconcerted him more than such a thing should have 
done. The adventure gave a suggestion of diablerie to 
his whole history since the moment when J ermyn read his 
secret design in the library at Fridoline House. 

He could not sleep, so he took down the Peau de Cha- 
grin from the bookcase which held his limited library, 
composed of only that which he held choicest in litera- 
ture. One could have read the bent of his mind by look- 
ing at the titles of those thirty or forty books. Goethe's 
Faust, Hein's Poetry and Prose, Alfred de Musset, Owen 
Meredith, Villon, Balzac, Baudelaire, Bichepin — the liter- 
ature of despair. 

He read how when the lawyer brought Baphael the 
news of his fortune, his first thought was to take the Peau 
de Chagrin from his pocket and measure it against the 
tracing he had made upon a table-napkin the night be- 
fore. 

The skin had shrunk perceptibly. So much had gone 
from his life in the emotions of a night of riot and 
feasting, in the shock of a sudden change in his fortunes. 

‘An allegory,' mused Hillersdon. ‘My life has been 
wasting rapidly since the night before last. I have been 
living faster — ^two heart-throbs for one.' 

He breakfasted early after two or three hours of broken 
sleep, and dawdled over his breakfast, taking up one 
volume after another with a painful inability to fix his 
mind upon any subject, until the inexorable church bells 
began their clangour close at hand, and made all thought 
impossible. 

Then only did he remember that it was Sunday morn- 
ing. He changed his coat hurriedly, brushed his hat, and 
set out for that particularly select and fashionable temple 
in which Edith Champion was wont to hear the eloquent 


72 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


sermons of a ‘delicate, dilletante, white-handed priest,’ in 
an atmosphere heavy with white-rose. Ess. bouquet, and 
the warm breath of closely-packed humanity. 

The choir was chanting the ‘Te Deum ’ when he went 
in, and secured one of the last rush-bottomed chairs avail- 
able in the crowded nave. His night wanderings had 
fatigued him more than he knew, and he slept profoundly 
through one of the choicest discourses of the season, and 
was not a little embarrassed when Mrs. Gresham insisted 
upon discussing every point the preacher had made. Hap- 
pily, both ladies were too eager to state their own opin- 
ions to discover his ignorance, or to guess that for him 
that thrilling sermon had been as the booming of a bum- 
ble bee in the heart of an over-blown rose — a sound of 
soothing and pleasantness. 

‘ He goes to the Riviera every winter,’ said Mrs. Cham- 
pion, slipping from the sermon to the preacher ; ‘ he is more 
popular there than in London. There is hardly standing 
room in any church where he preaches.’ 

Hillersdon walked into the Park with the two ladies, 
the customary church parade which always bored him, 
even in Edith Champion’s company, and even although 
his pride was stimulated by being seen in attendance upon 
one of the handsomest women in London. 

The park looked lovely in the summer noontide, the 
people were smart, well-dressed, admirable ; but the park 
and the people were the same as last year, and they would 
be the same next year — the same and always the same. 

It is the constant revolution stale, 

And tasteless' of the same repeated joys, 

That palls and satiates, and makes languid life 
A pedlar’s pack, that bows the bearer down.” 

He dined with Mrs. Champion, and went to a musical 
party with her, and that Sunday seemed to him one of 
the longest he had ever spent, longer even than the Sab- 
bath days of his boyhood, when he was allowed to read 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


73 


only good books, and forbidden all transactions with rat- 
catchers and ferrets. 

He was glad when he had handed Mrs. Champion to 
her carriage in Grosvenor-place, glad to go back to his 
bachelor loneliness, and impatient of Monday morning. 
He was up betimes, and hurried off to Lincolns Inn 
Fields as soon as it was reasonable to expect Mr. Crafton 
at his office. He wanted again to assure himself that Eb- 
enezer Milford’s fortune was a reality, and not a dream. 

The solicitor received him with unimpaired gracious- 
ne*s, and was ready with offers of assistance in any plans 
of his client. All that had to be done about the inheri- 
tance was in progress, but as all processes of law are 
lengthy it would be some little time before Mr. Hillers- 
don would be in actual possession of his wealth. 

‘The succession duties will be very heavy,’ said Crafton, 
shaking his head, and Hillersdon felt that in this respect 
his was a hard case. 

‘ Have you communicated with your friend, Mr. Wat- 
son ?’ the lawyer asked presently. 

‘ No, I forgot to do that.’ 

‘ It would be as well that you should look him up at 
once, and test his memory of the occurrence in the railway 
station,’ suggested Crafton. ‘ His evidence would be very 
useful in the — most unlikely — contingency of any at- 
tempt to upset the will.’ 

This remark had the effect of a douche of cold water 
upon Hillersdon. 

‘You don’t apprehend ?’ he faltered. 

‘No, I have not the slightest apprehension. Poor old 
Milford was an isolated being. If he had any relations 
I never heard of them. But, as a precautionary measure, 
I advise you to see your friend.’ 

‘Yes, yes, I will goto him at once,’ said Hillersdon 
feverishly, getting up and making for the door. 

‘There is no need for hurry. Is there nothing that I 
can do for you?’ 

E 


74 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘Nothing. I have been thinking of changing my lodg- 
ings — but that can stand over for a few days. I must 
see Watson — and then I must go down to the country to 
see my own people. It wouldn’t do for them to hear of 
my good luck from anyone else. I may tell them, 1 
suppose. I am not likely to find myself thrust out of 
this inheritance after a few weeks’ possession; I am not 
going to be a kind of Lady Jane Grey among legatees ? ’ 

‘No, no; there is really no danger. The will is a 
splendid will. It would be very difficult for anyone to 
attack it, even the nearest blood relation. I have not* the 
slightest fear.’ 

‘Give me your cheque for another five hundred, by 
way of backing your opinion,’ said Hillersdon, still fever- 
ishly, and with a shade of fretfulness. 

He was irritated by the mere suggestion that a will is 
an instrument that may be impeached. 

‘With pleasure,’ replied Mr. Grafton, ready with his 
cheque book; ‘shall I make it a thousand ?’ 

‘No, no, a monkey will do. I really don’t want the 
money, only I like to see you part with it freely. Thanks, 
good day.’ 

His hansom was waiting for him. He told the man 
to drive to the Albany, where he might utilize his call 
upon Watson by making inquiries about any eligible 
rooms. 

It was early in the day yet, and Watson was lingering 
over his breakfast, which had been lengthened out by 
the skimming of half -a dozen morning papers. He had 
not seen Hillersdon for some time, and welcomed him 
with frank cordiality. 

‘ What have you been doing with yourself all this 
time ? ’ he asked, and then answering his own question, 
as he rang for fresh coffee, ‘ moving in Mrs. Champion’s 
charmed circle, no doubt, and as her orbit ain’t mine we 
don’t often meet, and now we do meet I can’t compli- 
ment you on your appearance. You are looking uncom- 
monly seedy.’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 75 

‘ I have been sleeping badly for the last few nights, 
that's my only ailment. Do you remember that evening 
at Nice when you went to the station with me after the 
battle of flowers/ 

‘ And when you picked a churlish old fellow from the 
front of an advancing engine, and to all intents and pur- 
poses saved his life. Of course I remember. A curious 
old man, that. I believe he means to leave you a legacy 
of some kind. Nineteen pounds nineteen, perhaps, to 
buy a mourning ring. He was monstrously particular 
in his inquiries as to your name and parentage, and usual 
place of abode. He walked half the length of the avenue 
de la Gare with me, and he was very much troubled in 
mind about his umbrella.' 

' Did he tell you his own name ? ' 

‘ He gave me his card at parting, but I lost the card 
and forgot the name.' 

‘ A:id you really believe that I saved his life ? ' 

‘ I don't think there’s the slightest doubt about it. The 
thing was as near as a toucher. I expected to see you 
killed in a vain attempt to save him.' 

‘ And you would put as much as that in an afiidavit, or 
say as much in the witness box V 

‘ In a dozen affidavits, or in a dozen witness boxes. 
But why these questions ? ' 

Hillersdon told him the motive, and the fortune that 
was at stake. 

‘ Then the legacy comes to two millions,' cried Watson. 

‘ By Jove, you are a lucky fellow, and upon my honour 
you deserve it. You hazarded your life, and what can 
any man do more than that, and for an unknown traveller. 
The good Samaritan goes down to posterity on the strength 
of some kindly feeling, and twopence. You did a great 
deal more than the Samaritan, but the reward is stupend- 
ous ! Why cannot I pluck a shabby Croesus out of the 
iron way, or rescue a millionaire from drowning ? Why 
should this one lucky chance come your way and not mine ? 


76 


The World y The Flesh, and The Devil. 


You were only ten paces in advance of me when the 
crucial moment came. Well, I won’t grumble at your 
good fortune. After all, the accession of one’s bosom 
friend to millions makes oneself no poorer — yet there is 
always a feeling of being reduced to poverty when a 
friend tumbles into unexpected wealth. It will take me 
months to reconcile myself to the idea of you as a mil- 
lionaire. And now what are you going to do with your 

life r 

‘ Enjoy it if I can, having the means of enjoyment given 
me.’ 

‘ All that money can do you can do,’ said Watson, with 
a philosophic air. ‘ You will now have the opportunity 
of testing the power of wealth, its limitations, its strictly 
finite nature.’ 

" I will not moan if I find there are some things gold 
cannot buy,’ said Hillersdon. ‘ There are so many things 
which it can buy which I have been wanting all my life.’ 

‘ Well, you are a lucky fellow, and you deserve your 
luck, because you did a plucky thing without thought or 
fear of consequences. If you had paused to consider your 
own peril that old man would have been done for.’ 

The servant came in with the coffee, a welcome inter- 
ruption to Hillersdon, who was tired of being compli- 
mented on his pluck. His early breakfast had been only 
a cup of tea, and he was not sorry to begin again with 
Watson, who prided himself upon living well, and was a 
connoisseur of perigord pies and York hams, and took in- 
finite pains to get the freshest eggs and best butter that 
London could supply. 

‘ Well, you are going to enjoy your life ; that is under- 
stood. Imprimis, I suppose you will marry ? ’ said Wat- 
son, cheerily. 

" I told you I meant to enjoy my life,’ answered Hill- 
ersdon. ‘ The first element of happiness is liberty ; and 
you suggest that I should start by surrendering it to my 
wife ? ’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


77 


‘ Oh, that’s all bosh. A man with a big income does 
not lose his freedom by taking a wife. In a millionaire’s 
household a wife is only an ornament. She has neither 
control nor ascendancy over his existence. You remem- 
ber what Beckford said of the Venetian nobility at the 
close of the 18th century. Every great man in that en- 
chanting city had his secret haven — a niche in the laby- 
rinth of little streets, or in some shadowy bend of a narrow 
canal, known only to himself and his intimates, where he 
might live his own life, while his ostensible existence as 
Grand Seigneur was conducted with regal pomp and pub- 
licity in his palace on the Grand Canal. Do you suppose 
that the Venetian nobleman of that era was governed by 
his wife ? Pas si hete! 

' I shall never marry till I can marry tho woman I love,’ 
answered Hillersdon. 

Watson shrugged his shoulders significantly, and went 
on with his breakfast. He knew all about Mrs. Cham- 
pion, and that romantic attachment which had been going 
on for years, and which seemed as hopeless and almost as 
unprofitable upon Gerard Hillersdon’s side as Don Quix- 
ote s worship of Dulcinea del Toboso. Watson, who was 
strictly practical, could not enter into the mind of a man 
who sacrificed his life for a virtuous woman. He could 
understand the other thing — life and honour, fortune and 
good name, flung at the feet of Venus Pandemos. He 
had seen too much of the influence of base women and 
ignoble love to doubt the power of evil over the hearts of 
men. It was this namby-pamby devotion, this lap-dog 
love, the desire of the moth for the star, in which he could 
not believe. 

Hillersdon left him in time to catch the Exeter express 
at Waterloo. He had made up his mind that he must no 
longer keep his own people in ignorance of the change in 
his fortunes. He had given the hard-worked father and 
the long-suffering mother too much trouble in the past, 
and now the hour of compensation must be no longer de- 


78 


TJoe Worldj The Fleshy and The Devil. 


layed. Yes, his fathers church should be restored, and 
the dear old tumble-down Rectory renovated from garret 
to cellar without injury to its tumble-do wnness, which 
was of all things beautiful — a long, low house, with bow 
windows bellying out unexpectedly ; a house so smoth- 
ered with banksia roses, myrtle, flowering ash, and wis- 
taria that it was not easy to discover whether its walls 
were brick or stone, rough-cast or cob. 

It was a relief to Gerard Hillersdon to turn his back 
upon London, to feel that his face was set towards green 
pastures and summer woods, to see the white fleeces of 
rural sheep instead of the darklings of the park, and the 
frolics of young foals in the meadows instead of smart 
young women bucketting along the Row. 

^ God made the countr}^ and man made the town,’ he 
said to himself, quoting a poet whom his father loved and 
quoted often. 

It was still early in the afternoon when he went in at 
the gate of the rectory garden. The estuary of the Exe 
lay before him, with crisp wavelets dancing in the sun. 
His father s parish was midway between Exeter and Ex- 
mouth, a place of quietness and fertile meadows, gardens 
brimming over with flowers, thatched cottages smothered 
with roses and honey -suckle, beehives, poultry yards, and 
all rustic sights and sounds ; a village in which a rector 
is a kind of king, exercising more influence than parlia- 
ments and potentates afar off*. Two girls were playing 
tennis on the lawn to the right of the long low verandah 
that screened the drawing-room windows, two glancing 
figures in white gowns that caught the sunlight. One he 
knew for his sister Lilian; the other was a stranger. 

Lilian faced the carriage* drive by which he approached, 
recognized him, flung down her racquet with a joyful ex- 
clamation, and ran to meet him, heedless of her antagon- 
ist. 

‘ I thought you were never coming near us again,’ she 
said, when they had kissed ; ‘ mother has been full of 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 79 


anxieties about you. It was time you came ; yes, high 
time, for you are looking dreadfully ill/ 

‘ Everyone seems bent upon telling me that,’ said, 
with a vexed air. 

‘ You have been ill, I believe, and you never let us 
know/ 

‘ 1 am as well as I ever was in my life, and I have not 
been ill. Two or three bad* nights seem to have played 
havoc with my looks.’ 

‘ It is the horrid life you lead in London — parties every 
day and every night ; no respite, no repose. I hear of 
your doings, you see, though you so seldom write to any 
of us. Miss Vere, who is staying with me, knows all 
about you/ 

‘ Then Miss Vere possesses all knowledge worth having 
— from my point of view. I daresay she knows more 
about me than I know of myself. You shall introduce 
me to her, after I have seen my mother.’ 

‘ You shall see mother without one moment’s waste of 
time,’ said Lilian. ‘Poor mother, she has so pined for 
you. Mother,’ called Lilian, addressing her fresh young 
voice to the verandah, ‘ Mother, come out here and be 
startled and delighted in a breath.’ 

Gerard and his sister were moving towards the house 
as she called. A tall matronly figure emerged from the 
verandah, and a cry of gladness welcomed the prodigal 
son. In the next minute he was clasped to his mother’s 
heart. 

‘ My dearest boy.’ 

‘ My ever dear mother/ 

‘ I have been so anxious about you, Gerard.’ 

‘Not without cause, dear mother. I was in very low 
spirits, altogether at odds with fortune a few days ago, 
and now I have had a stroke of luck. I have come to 
tell you good news/ 

‘ You have written another book,’ she cried delightfully. 

‘ Better than that.’ 

‘ Nothing would be better than that to my mind.’ 


80 


The World, The flesh, and The Devil, 


* What would you say if a good old man, whom 1 only 
saw once in my life, had left me his fortune ? ' 

‘ I should say it was like a fairy tale/ 

‘ It is like a fairy tale, but I believe it is reality. I 
believe, because a London solicitor has advanced me a 
thousand pounds with no better security than my ex- 
pectations. I have not sold my shadow, and I have not 
accepted the Peau de chagrin, I am substantially and 
realistically rich, and I can do anything in the world that 
money can do to make you and father and Lilian happy 
for the rest of your lives.’ 

‘ You can give me a new racquet,’ said his sister. * It 
is a misery to play with this, and Barbara has the very 
latest improvement in racquets.’ 

‘ My mother had a maid called Barbera,’ ” quoted 
Gerard lightly. ‘Miss Vere is your Barbara, I suppose V 

He went into the drawing-room with his mother, while 
Lilian ran to apologize to Miss Vere for her sudden de- 
sertion. Mother and son sat side by side, hand clasped 
in hand, and Gerard told her the strange history of his 
altered fortunes. He told her of his debts and of his de- 
spair, his utter weariness of life ; but he did not tell her 
that he had contemplated suicide ; nor did he fling across 
her simple thoughts the cloudy mysticism which has be- 
come a frequent factor in modern life. He did not tell 
her of the scene in Jermyn’s chambers, or of his vain en- 
deavours to discover the whereabouts of those chambers; 
nor did he talk to her of Edith Champion, albeit she 
knew something of that romantic phase of his life. 

She was enraptured at the thought of his good fortune, 
without one selfish consideration of the prosperity it 
would bring to her. In the midst of her rejoicing she 
began to talk to him about his health. 

‘ You are not looking well,’ she said, ‘health is of far 
more importance than fortune.’ 

This harping on an unpleasant strain irritated him. 
This was the third time within the day that he had been 
told he looked ill. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


81 


‘ You women are all morbid/ he said. ‘ You poison 
your lives with unrealized apprehensions. If any one 
gave you the Koh-i noor you would make yourself mis- 
erable by the suspicion that it was only a bit of glass. 
You would want to break it up in order to be sure of its 
value. Suppose I have a headache — suppose I have had 
two or three bad nights, and am looking haggard and 
pale, what is that against two millions ? ’’ 

‘ Two millions ! Oh, Gerard, is your fortune anything 
like that ? ' asked his mother in an awe-stricken voice. 

‘ I am told that it is very much like that.' 

‘ It sounds like a dream. There is something awful in 
the idea of such wealth in the possession of one young 
man. And oh, Gerard, think of the thousands and tens 
of thousands who are almost starving.' 

‘ I suppose everybody will tell me that/ exclaimed her 
son irritably. ‘ Why should I think of the starving 
thousands ? Why, just because I have the means of en- 
joying life, am I to make myself miserable by brooding 
upon the miseries of others ? If it comes to that a man 
ought never to be happy while there is a single ill-used 
cab horse in the world. Just think of all the horses in 
London and Paris that are under- fed and over-driven, and 
have galled shoulders and cracked heels. There is mad- 
ness in it. Think of the ill-treated children, the little 
children, the gutter martyrs, whose lives are a burden. 
If we are to think of these things our choicest luxuries, 
our most exalted pleasures, must turn to gall and worm- 
wood. For every pair of happy lovers there are women 
in degradation and despair, and men whose lightest touch 
is defilement. If we stop to consider how this world we 
live in — so full of exquisite beauty and eager joyous life 
— is just as full of want and misery and crime, the sharp 
anguish of physical pain, and the dull agony of patient, 
joyless lives, there can be no such thing as pleasure. We 
must not give way to pity, mother. Since we cannot heal 
all these gaping wounds — since there is no possible pana- 


82 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


cea for the sufferings of a universe, we must narrow our 
thoughts and hopes to the limits of home and family, and 
say “ Kismet, Allah is good.’’ But for you, dearest, for 
you and all whom you want to help, my wealth shall be 
as potent as the four-leaved shamrock. You shall be my 
almoner. You shall find out which among all the never- 
ending schemes for helping the helpless are really good, 
and sound, and honest, and I will aid them with open hand.’ 

* My dear son, I knew your heart was full of pity,’ mur- 
mured his mother tenderly. 

‘ Oh, but I don’t want to pity anyone. I want you. 
with your clear, calm mind, to think and act for mo. 
Everybody tells me I am looking haggard and ill, now 
just when life is worth cherishing. I want to avoid over- 
much agitation if I can. Let us talk of happier things. 
How is the dear governor, or the Rector as he prefers to 
be called ? ’ 

‘ He has not been very well of late. Last winter tried 
him severely.’ 

‘ He must spend next winter at San Remo or Sorrento. 
It will be only for you both to choose your locality.’ 

‘ And I may see Italy before I die,’ gasped the Rector’s 
wife, whose peregrinations hitherto had rarely gone be- 
yond Boscastle on the one side and Bath on the other, 
with a fortnight in London once in two years. 

‘ Yes, you shall see all that is fairest in this world,’ 
answered Gerard. 

‘ Your father is spending the day in Exeter. What a 
delightful surprise to greet him with when he comes home 
to dinner. But you must not wait for eight o’clock, Ger- 
ard. You must have something after your journey. 
Shall I order a chop, or a grilled chicken ?’ 

‘No, dear mother, I am too happy in your company to 
want such substantial food. I think I saw cups and sau- 
cers in the garden, under our favourite tree — 

“ And thou in all thy breadth and height 
Of foliage, towering sycamore. ’ ” 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


83 


‘ Oh, Gerard, it is a tulip tree. Your father would be 
dreadfully offended to hear it called a sycamore. Yes, 
you shall have some tea, dearest.’ She rang the bell, and 
ordered tea, new laid eggs, hot cakes, to be taken out to 
the garden. ‘ What happiness to be sitting there with 
you once again. It is ages since you have been with us, 
except for just that hurried visit last Christmas.’ 

Gerard sighed as he acknowledged the force of this re- 
proach. All his summers of late years had been spent 
far afield. In the Tyrol, in Scotland, in Sweden, in West- 
moreland, at Carlsbad, anywhere whither Mrs. Cham- 
pion’s caprices or Mr. Champion’s ^ cure ’ led the lady and 
her satellite. 

He had enjoyed no more independent existence than 
one of Jupiter’s moons, but had been constrained to re- 
volve in the orbit of his planet, 

He went into the garden with his mother. Every 
shrub was a reproach, for all had grown with the growth 
of years since he had seen them in their summer glory. 
A fiying visit at Christmas or New Year’s tide had been 
as much as his goddess allowed him. And now — albeit 
his chains were unbroken — he had a feeling that they 
were somehow lengthened, and that he was going to do 
as he liked henceforward. 

The stout, comfortable-looking butler, whom he re- 
membered a lad in buttons, brought tea, and toasted 
cakes, and poached eggs, and clouted cream, and other 
rustic luxuries ; and the tennis players, who had taken 
one tea at four o’clock, were very glad to take another at 
six. Gerard was introduced to Miss Vere, otherwise Bar- 
bara — a girl with a handsome face and a commanding 
figure, but who looked as if she had vecvb, Gerard thought, 
and who at once began to talk of the houses at which 
they had met in London, which were all the smartest and 
most creditable houses, be it remarked. The young lady 
sank any lesser mansions where they might have encoun- 
tered each other. 


S4 


The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘ I think you know Mrs. Champion/ Miss Vere remark- 
ed innocently. ‘She and my cousin, Mrs. Harper, are 
great chums.’ 

‘ Mrs. Theodore Harper ? ’ 

‘ Yes, Mrs. Theodore.’ 

‘ I know her well, a very pretty woman.’ 

‘ Yes, she is way of being a beauty,’ said Miss Vere, 
who was much handsomer, and no doubt was fully aware 
of her superiority ; ‘ but don’t you think she’s rather silly 
about that boy of hers — taking him everywhere ? ’ 

‘ Upon that point I consider her positively imbecile. 
A child in an Eton jacket should not be obtruded upon 
the society of reasonable men and women. I believe she 
only takes him about with her in order that people may 
exclaim, “Your son, Mrs. Harper? Impossible? How 
could you have a son of twelve years old, when you can 
be at most two-and- twenty ? ” 

‘ And then she smiles — carefully — through her magno- 
lia bloom, and is perfectly happy for the rest of the after- 
noon, while the boy sits turning over illustrated books, 
and boring himself to death.’ 

‘ Or sucking surreptitious lollipops, till some prosy old 
Etonian goes and sits beside him, and talks about the 
playing fields and the river,’ said Gerard. 

Lilian and her mother sat smiling at this conversation, 
happily unconscious of its utter artificiality. Lilian, who 
was lily-fair and guileless as a child, looked up to Bar- 
bara Vere with eyes of admiring wonder. Her exqui- 
sitely fitting gowns, her aplomb, and her knowledge of 
the side scenes of life commanded the village maiden’s 
respect. To talk to a girl who had the peerage and bar- 
onetage at her fingers’ ends, knew to a shade every impor- 
tant person’s political opinions, was familiar with all the 
society scandals and all the approaching alliances, was a 
privilege for the Rector s daughter. She wondered how 
the brilliant Barbara could endure the jog-trot domesti- 
city of the Rectory, and it had never occurred to her that 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


85 


Barbara Vere put in for repairs at this quiet little harbour 
after the wear and tear of her annual voyage on the high 
seas of London society, 

‘I feel so fresh and so happy when I am with you/ 
said Barbara. ‘ I leave my French maid and my powder- 
box in London, and steep myself in the atmosphere of 
Milton’s Allegro/’ ’ 

She might have added that in this clerical seclusion 
she did not trouble to make up her eyebrows, or to put 
on just that one artistic touch of rouge upon the cheek- 
bone, which in London drawing-rooms gave added lustre 
to her fine dark eyes. Here her life was spent for the 
most part in a garden, and she was wise enough to know 
how ghastly all artificial embellishments become under 
such conditions. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE FACE IN THE VISION. 

HE little party of four sat long at the tea-table 
under the wide branches of the tulip tree, 

' which was in its perfection at this season. The 
Rectory garden was on a level stretch of 
ground ; but below the shrubbery that girdled 
lawn and parterre, the glebe meadows sloped to- 
wards the low, irregular cliff; and beyond the un- 
dulating line of the cliff danced the brave wavelets 
of the estuary. The garden and its surroundings were 
alike lovely, fertile, smiling — not the grand scenery o£ 
North Devon, nor the still bolder coast-line of North 
Cornwall, by that steep rock where once uprose Tintagefs 
crowd of towers, but a fertile and lovable land, which 
seems to invite restfulness and a happy content with 



86 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


things that be, rather than soaring aspirations or heroic 
endeavour. 

Landward of the Rectory garden and orchard there rose 
a wooded hill^ whose summit commanded a fine view of 
the channel and the white- winged ships sailing away to- 
wards Start Point and the distant Lizard. That hill, 
with its wood and coppice had been Gerard's delight in 
the summer holidays of boyhood. He had read there in 
his long vacations — and there were spots which to this 
hour recalled certain passages in the classics, and certain 
difficulties in the higher mathematics. 

He thought of that far-off* time as he sat, sipping a 
third cup of tea, in a dreamy mood, after having done 
scanty justice to the plethora of rustic fare. The two 
girls had gone indoors, leaving mother and son tete-S,-tete, 
Mrs. Hillersdon sitting silent, plying those busy needles 
which knitted socks for half the old men and children in 
the parish, and Gerard lost in reverie. He was first to 
break the silence. 

‘ Mother, I saw a face the other day which reminded 
me of home — and of — ever so many years ago — five or six 
years, at least — and yet I can t associate the face with 
anyone in the parish. I can't tell you how familiar it 
seemed, or how I have battered my brains to find out 
where and how I saw it.' 

^ A man's face, or a woman's ? ' 

‘ A girl’s face — or rather say the face of a woman of 
three or four and twenty — a woman in humble life. It 
must have been one of your cottagers, but I can't identify 
her. It is a very lovely face.' 

‘ But where did you see this young woman ? Why 
didn't you question her ? ' 

‘ The face fiashed upon me and was gone. There was 
no time for asking question'?. I want you to help me, if 
you can. So lovely a face must have made some impres- 
sion upon you. Think of the prettiest girls you have 
known in this village and the surrounding neighborhood.' 


87 


The World, The Fleah, and The Devil, 

‘ There are so many pretty girls. Devon is famous for 
beauty. A good many of the cottagers about here have 
given me their photographs. People are very fond of 
being photographed now, the luxury is so cheap. I have 
an album that I keep on purpose for my parish friends. 
You can look through it this evening, if you like, and see 
if you can identify your young woman.' 

‘She would not be one among a herd,’ Gerard answer- 
ed irritably. ‘ I know what your Devon beauty means 
— bright blue eyes, fine carnations. This girl is utterly 
unlike the type. Surely you can remember a girl of ex- 
ceptional beauty, with whom we had some kind of as- 
sociation any time within the last ten years, but whom I 
must have seen seldom, or I should be able to identify 
her ? ’ 

‘Exceptional beauty!' repeated Mrs. Hillersdon, thought- 
fully, ‘ I can recall nobody in the parish whom I should 
call exceptionally beautiful. But men have such odd 
notions about beauty. I heard a girl with a snub nose 
and a wide mouth extolled as if she were Venus. Why 
are you so anxious to know more about this young wo- 
man? ' 

‘ I have reason to think she is in distress, and I should 
like to help her — now that I am rich enough to do foolish 
things.' 

‘ It would not be foolish if she were a good girl — but 
beware of exquisite beauty in humble life, Gerard. It 
would make me miserable if — ' 

‘ Oh, my dear mother, we have all read “ David Copper- 
field. I am not going to imitate Steerforth in his be- 
trayal of little Emily. I am mystified about this girl, 
and I want to learn who she it and whence she came.' 

‘ Not from this parish, Gerard, I am sure, unless you 
can find her in my album.' 

‘ Let me see your album, this minute,’ cried Gerard. 

The parlor maid approached as he spoke, and began to 
clear the tea table. 


88 


The World, The Flesh, and 2 he Devil, 


* Run up to my room and bring me the big brown pho- 
tograph album/ said Mrs. Hillersdon, and the brisk young 
pallor maid tripped away and presently returned with a 
iDrown morocco volume which had seen service. Gerard 
turned the leaves eagerly. He beheld a curious collection 
of old-fashioned finery, mushroom hats, crinolines, Gari- 
baldi shirts, festoons, flounces, and Maria-folds, polonaises, 
jackets, mantles, of every style that has been worn with- 
in thirty years — old men and maidens, fathers, mothers, 
children, babies in abundance. 

There were plenty of pretty faces — faces which even 
the rustic photographer could not spoil ; but there was 
not one which offered the faintest resemblance to the face 
he had seen in Justin Jermyn s chambers. 

‘No ! ’ he exclaimed, flinging the book upon the table 
in disgust, ‘ there is no sign of her among all your bump- 
kins." 

‘ Please don’t sneer at my bumpkins. You don’t know 
what good, bright, patient, hard-working creatures there 
are among them, and how proud I am to know that they 
are fond of me." 

‘ The girl I saw had an ethereal face — not flesh, but 
spirit— dreaming eyes, large and soft, shadowed by long, 
dark lashes — fair hair, not golden, mark you — but dis- 
tinctly fair, a pale, soft brown, like the coat of a fallow 
deer. Her features were exquisitely delicate, modelling of 
nose and chin like a madonna by Rafiaelle — yes, it is a 
Raflaelle face, so soft in colouring, so heavenly in expres- 
sion — but sad, unutterably sad." 

‘ Hester Davenport." exclaimed Mrs. Hillersdon, sud- 
denly, ‘you have described her to the life. Poor girl. 
Where did you meet her ? I thought she was in Aus- 
tralia." 

‘ Perhaps only in a dream. But who is Hester Daven- 
port ? " 

‘Don’t you remember the curate, Nicholas Davenport, 
the man whom your father engaged without adequate 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


89 


scrutiny into antecedents or character, on the strength of 
his fine manner and appearance, and his evident super- 
iority to the common run of Churchmen — a man of great 
theological learning, your father told me. He had been 
tutor to Lord Raynfield’s son — in Cumberland — and he 
gave your father a letter of recommendation from Lord 
Raynfield, dated some seven years before he came to us. 
You know how unsuspicious your father is. It never oc- 
curred to him that the man’s character might have 
changed since that letter was written. He was with us 
a year and a half, and towards the end of that time his 
daughter came from Hanover, where she had been sent for 
a year or so to learn German. We were all struck with 
her beauty, and sweet, gentle manners/ 

‘Yes, yes, I remember now. I was at home when she 
arrived. How could I forget ? She came to tea with 
Lilian one afternoon when I was loafing about the gar- 
den, and I talked to her for five minutes, or so, not more, 
for I had to hurry off* to catch the train for Exeter. I 
saw her once after that — met her on the sands one morn- 
ing. Yes, the face comes back to me as it was then — in 
all the freshness of girlhood.’ 

‘ She was only seventeen when she came from Ger- 
many.’ 

‘ And Davenport went wrong, did he not ? Turn out 
an incorrigible drunkard ?’ 

‘Yes ; it was unspeakably sad. He used to have occa- 
sional lapses — never during his church work — but when 
he was about in the parish. He told your father that he 
suffered from slight attacks of epilepsy ; so slight as to be 
no hindrance to his duty. This went on for over a year, 
and then, on All Saints’ Day, he had an attack in the 
reading-desk — a lapse of consciousness, as your father 
called it. He seemed very strange — we were puzzled — 
but none of us guessed the dreadful truth, till one Sun- 
day evening, about a month after his poor daughter came 
home from Germany, he went up into the pulpit, reeling, 
F 


90 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil 


and clutching at the balustrade, and began to preach in 
the wildest language, uttering dreadful blasphemies, and 
bursting into hysterical laughter. Yo.ur father had to go 
up into the pulpit with one of the churchwardens and 
bring him down by main force. He was perfectly mad ; 
but it was drink, Gerard, drink, that had caused all the 
evil. He had been taking brandy or chloral for years — 
sometimes one, sometimes the other. He was a secret 
drinker — that learned, intellectual man, a man who had 
taken the highest honours at Oxford, a man whom Ox- 
ford men remembered.’ 

‘What became of him after that? 

‘He had to leave us, of course, and as your father 
dared not recommend him to anybody, and the scandal of 
his behaviour had been heard ox throughout the diocese, 
there was no hope of his getting any further employment 
in the Church. Your father was very sorry for him, and 
gave him a little money to help him to emigrate. His old 
pupil. Lord Wolverley, helped him, and old college friends 
contributed, and he and his daughter sailed for Mel- 
bourne. I went to Plymouth to see them off, for I was 
very sorry for the poor motherless girl, in her deep 
distress, and your father and others wanted to be 
sure that they really got off, as Davenport was a slippery 
kind of man, and might have let the ship sail without 
him. They went out in a sailing vessel, crowded with 
first, second, and third-class emigrants. They went 
second-class, and I can see her now as I saw her that day 
standing in the bows, with her hand through her father’s 
arm, while he waved his handkerchief to me. She was 
white and wan, poor child, but exquisitely lovely. I 
could not help thinking of what her life might have been 
if she had had good and prosperous parents ; yet I know 
she adored that old reprobate.’ 

‘ Exquisitely lovely, yes,’ mused Gerard, ‘ and going 
out to a new world in an emigrant ship, and with a 
drunken old man for her only guardian and stay. A 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


91 


hard fate for exquisite loveliness, is it not, mother ? And 
now, I believe she is in London, working at a needle- 
woman’s starvation wages, somewhere in St. Giles’,’ 

‘ But how came you to learn so much, and yet not to 
know more ? ’ 

‘ Did I not tell you it was a dream ? ’ he asked, with a 
mocking smile! But I mean to know more, mother; I 
mean to find this girl by hook or by crook, and to help 
her 1 ’ 

‘You must not mix yourself in her life, Gerard,’ said 
Mrs. Hillersdon, gravely ; ‘ that might end badly.’ 

‘Oh, mother, you are full of fears ! One would think 
I were Mephistopheles, or Faust; while all I want is that 
my money may be of some use to a friendless girl. Hes- 
ter Davenport, I remember how lovely I thought her, but 
I was no more in love with her than with the Venus of 
the Capitol. Strange that I should have utterly failed to 
identify the face, till you helped me ! ’ 

He went indoors with his mother, and found his room 
— the room which had been his ever since he left the 
nursery — ready for occupation. The old nursemaid, 
whom he had teased and joked with in the old Marlbor- 
ough holidays, had bustled and hurried to get Mr. 
Gerard’s room aired and dusted, and his portmanteau 
unpacked, and all things arranged before the dressing- 
bell rang out from the old wooden cupola that crowned 
the low roof. Everything had the odour he knew so well 
^ — a perfume of lavender and withered rose leaves mixed 
with some strange Indian scent which was an inher- 
itance from his mother’s side •of the house, her people 
having been civilians of good standing in Bengal for half 
a century. It was a curious composite perfume, which 
for him meant the atmosphere of home, and brought back 
memories of youth. 

The Rector received the news of his son’s altered for- 
tunes at first with incredulity, and then with gladness 
mingled with awe. 


92 


The Worldj The Flesh and The Devil. 


‘ The whole business seems too wonderful to be true, 
Gerard,'* he said ; ‘ but if it really is true, you are just the 
luckiest fellow I ever heard of — to inherit an old man's 
wealth without ever having cringed to him or fawned 
upon him while he was alive — to receive two millions 
sterling, without having to say thank you, except to. 
Providence ! ' 

The Rector was by no means a selfish man, and he had 
been an indulgent father, bearing with a good deal of ex- 
travagance and some perversity on the part of his son, 
but he was not slow to see that this fortune must needs 
mean comfort and luxury for him in his declining years, 
and a freedom from financial cares which would be new 
to himself and his wife, liberally as the Rectory was ad- 
ministered. His living was worth nine hundred a year, 
and he and his wife between them had about five hund- 
red of independent income ; and it is not easy for a man 
of good family and with refined tastes to live within an 
income of fourteen hundred a year, especially when he is 
Rector of a rural parish in which the lower orders look to 
him for aid in all their necessities, while the surrounding 
gentry expect him to play an equal part in all their 
sports and hospitalities. 

Gerard stayed with his people just two days. That 
was as much time as he could spare for inaction, since 
there was upon him the natural restlessness of a man 
whose fortunes have undergone a sudden and wondrous 
change, and who is eager to put newly acquired power* to 
the test. Father, motherland sister would gladly have 
kept him longer in that rural paradise, and Barbara 
Vere, having got wind of his inheritance, exercised 
all her blandishments, her spells of woven paces and of 
weaving hands, to bind him to her side. Garden, and 
hills, and rustic lanes, and summer sea, were all alike 
suggestive of restfulness and oblivion of the busy world; 
— but a young man newly lord of vast wealth is no more 
to be satisfied with indolence in a garden than Eve was. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 98 

He too, like Eve, longed to taste the fruit of the fatal 
tree. 

‘ I have seen what life is like to a man who never has 
a Sj)are five-pound note,’ he told his sister ; ‘ I want to 
find out how life tastes to a millionaire. And when I 
have furnished rooms or a house, and have settled down 
a little, you must come and keep house for me, Lilian — ’ 

‘’Nonsense, dear! You will be marrying before the 
year is out.’ 

‘I have no idea of marrying. There is nothing so 
unlikely as my marriage. You shall be mistress of my 
house.’ 

‘I couldn’t leave mother — at least, not for years to 
come,’ said Lilian. 

‘ In years to come she will need you more than she. 
needs you now. I begin to understand you, Lilian. That 
tall, ill-looking curate — Mr. Cumberland — has something 
to do with your hesitations.’ 

‘Do you think him so very ugly ? ’ asked Lilian, with 
a distressed look. 

‘I didn’t say very ugly, but I certainly don’t think 
him handsome. That knotted and bulging brow means 
brains, I suppose.’ 

‘ He was fifth wrangler, and he is a splendid musician,’ 
said his sister. ‘ I wish you would stop till Sunday till 
you see what he has made of the choir.’ 

Tf he has made them sing in tune he must be a won- 
derful man. And so he is the person whose merits and 
fortunes are to colour your future, Lilian. I had no idea 
of it when I saw him hanging over your piano last night. 
I thought he was only a pis-aller. I suppose he is just 
the type of man girls around country parsonages admire 
— tall, athletic, with fine eyes, and dark, overhanging 
brows, large, strong hands, thick, wavy hair, and a power- 
ful baritone voice. I can quite understand your liking 
Mr. Cumberland. But what does the governor think of 
it all?’ 


94 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘ Father does not mind/ Lilian answered naively, 

‘ Jack is of very good family, but he will have to get a 
living before we are married/ 

‘ He shall have a living, if he is worthy of my sister,* 
said Gerard, * money will buy livings — he shall be a plu- 
ralist, if he likes/ 

‘ Oh, Gerard, he is the last man to like that. He has 
such a strong idea of duty. He would like a big parish 
in a sea-port, I think, with plenty of work. His best 
gifts are wasted in such a place as this, but all our people 
adore him. Father owns that he never had such a helper/ 
‘ My sweet enthusiast, we will look out for a big sea- 
port. You shall be a ministering angel to sailors and 
sailors* wives — you shall temper the cruelties of life in a 
crowded city — and perhaps by waj’’ of reward I shall 
hear some day that my sister’s husband has been struck 
down by a malignant fever and that she has done herself 
to death in nursing him.* 


CHAPTER VI. 


‘IT IS AN OATH,* SHE SAID. 

^ERARD went back to London, but eager as he 
was to return, he felt a pang of regret as he 
/.iMl bade his mother good-bye in the fresh early 
morning, and turned his face towards the 
9 great city. His brief visit to the old home 
had been an interval of rest in a life that had 
been all unrest of late. He fancied that pean de 
chagrin could hardly have shrunk by a hair’s 
breadth during those hours of calm affection, or inter- 
change of thought and feeling, without vehemence or 



The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


95 


excitement. To go back to Mrs. Champion and her set 
was like going back to the edge of a volcano. The rage 
of spending was upon him. He wanted to do something 
with the money which he had scarcely dared to calculate. 
He drove straight from Waterloo Station to Lincoln’s Inn 
and went through the schedule of his possessions with 
Mr. Cranberry, a little, dry old man, like the Princess 
Idas father, and had none of the prestige and unctious- 
ness of his junior partner, Mr. Grafton. One could divine 
easily that while Mr. Crafton lived in a handsome 
‘place’ at Surbiton, grew pines and peaches, and prided 
himself upon his stable and garden, Mr. Cranberry was 
content with a dingy house in one of the Bloomsbury 
squares, and restricted his pride of life to a few Dutch 
pictures, a good plain cook, and a cellar of comet port and 
old East Indian sherry. 

From this gentleman Gerard Hillersdon elicited — to- 
gether with much detail — the main fact that his capital 
summed up to a little over two millions, and was invested 
securely, in such a manner as to yield an average four 
and a half per cent., whereby his income amounted to 
£90,000. 

His cheek paled at the mere mention of the sum. It 
was too much undoubtedly, almost an evil thing to ac- 
quire such gigantic wealth with a suddenness as of an 
earthquake or an apoplectic stroke. The magnitude of 
his wealth overawed him, and yet he had no desire to 
lessen it by any large act of benevolence or philanthropy. 
He had no inclination to give the London slums another 
breathing ground, or to sink £100,000 upon a block of 
dwellings for the abjects of the great city. He was at once 
scared and elated. 

‘ Let me have a few thousands immediately,’ he said ; 
open an account for me at Mr. Milford’s bank. Let me feel 
that I am rich.’ 

‘ It shall be done,’ replied Mr. Cranberry ; and then he 
explained that there were certain formalities to be gone 


96 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


through, which could be completed without delay, if his 
client would give his mind to the business. 

The two men drove round to the bank together. Cran- 
berry opened his client’s account with his own cheque 
for £5,000, and a clerk handed Mr. Hillersdon a cheque 
book. His first act on returning to his lodgings was to 
write a cheque for a thousand pounds payable to Rev. 
Edward Hillersdon, and this he enclosed in a brief scrawl 
to his mother : 

' Ask the Rector to give Lilian a new frock,’ he wrote, 
‘ and to do just what he likes with the rest of the money. 
1 shall send you my little gift upon your birthday next 
week. Alas ! I let the date slip by last year, unmarked 
by so much as a card.’ 

It was too late to begin his search for a new domicile 
that afternoon, so he called on Mrs. Champion, who had 
gone to Charing Cross Station to meet Mr. Champion on 
his return from the Continent, and then he went on to 
the pretty little Septem Club, with its old-fashioned, 
low -ceiled rooms, and bow windows looking into Bird- 
cage walk, and there he took tea with Roger Larose, who 
was generally to be found there at tea-time. 

‘ I hear you have come into a fortune,’ said Larose, with 
his easy languor. ‘You have been trying to keep the fact 
dark I know, but these things always ooze out.’ 

‘ Who told you ? ’ 

‘ Nobody. It is in the air. I think I read a para- 
graph in the ‘ Hesperus. ’ There are always paragraphs. 
I congratulate you upon your wealth. Is it much ? ’ 

^ ‘Yes; it is a good deal. My old friends needn’t be 
afraid of borrowing a few pounds of me when they are 
hard up.’ 

‘ Thanks, my dear Gerard. I will bear it in mind. 
And what are you going to do ? Shall you really be 
content to live among us, and know us still ? ’ 

‘ The world and the people I know are quite the best 
world and people I have ever imagined, only I mean to 


The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil. 


97 


have pleasant surroundings. Give me your counsel, Larose, 
as an architect and a man of taste. Shall I have cham- 
bers in the Albany, or a house and garden of my own ? " 

‘ A house, by all means ! The Albany is old-fashioned ; 
it savours of Pelham and Coningsby. You must have a 
house near the south side of Hyde Park, — a house in ^ 
walled garden. There are few such houses left now, and 
yours will be fabulously dear. That, of course, is a 
necessity. You must get an R. A. to decorate your walls. 
The President won’t do it, but you must have an R.A.’ 

‘ Thanks, I have my own ideas about decoration and 
furniture.’ 

‘ And you don’t want an R. A. ? Extraordinary young 
man ! However, your garden will be the grand point, — 
a garden in which you can entertain, a garden in which 
you can breakfast or dine t^te-^-tSte with your chosen 
friend, or with the select few. In London there is noth- 
ing like a garden for distinction. The costliness of it 
always tells. Sit down and write to a house agent at 
once; someone near the Park. Messrs. Barley & Mennet ? 
Yes, they will do. Tell them exactly what you want.’ 

The letter was written at Larose’s dictation — a house 
of such and such elevation ; between Knights-bridge and 
the Albert Hall — stabling ample, but not too near the 
house ; garden of at least tw^ acres indispensable. 

Messrs. Barley and Mennet’s answer came by the eleven 
o’clock post on the following morning. They were pleased 
to state that by a happy conjunction of events — namely, 
the sudden death of a client, and his widow’s withdrawal 
to the Continent — they had now at their disposal just 
such a house and grounds as Mr. Hillersdcn required. 
Such houses, Messrs. B. and M. begged to remind Mr. H., 
were seldom in the market ; they were as precious and as 
rare in their line as the Koh-i-noor or the Pitt diamond. 
The price asked for the ground-lease of seventy-three and 
a quarter years was forty thousand pounds, a very rea- 
sonable amount under the circumstances. The annual 


98 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


ground rent was two hundred and fifty pounds. The 
auctioneers enclosed a card to view, and Hillersdon set off 
at once, eager to see if the house realized their descrip- 
tion. When he found himself in Piccadilly he thought 
he would ask Edith Champion to. go and look at the 
house with him. The attention would please her, no 
doubt ; and he had a vague feeling of remorse on her 
account, as if — although he had called on her yesterday — 
he had neglected her. Certainly under the old conditions 
he would have gone back to Hertford-street in the evening, 
instead of wandering from theatre to music-hall, and 
from music-hall to post-midnight club, with Roger 
Larosp. 

There were two carriages, a Victoria and a pair-horse 
brougham standing before Mr. Champion’s house ; a curi- 
ous circumstance at that early hour. It occurred to Ger- 
ard that they looked like doctors’ carriages, and the idea 
struck him with a sudden dread. Could anything evil 
have happened ? Could she, whom he last saw splendid 
in health and beauty, have been stricken with sudden 
illness ? 

He asked the servant who answered his ring if Mrs. 
Champion was ill. 

* No, sir, not Mrs. Champion,’ the man answered, 
promptly ; ^ Mr. Champion came ’ome out of ’ealth, and 
there’s been two doctors with ’im for the last ’arf-hour. 
Will you step up to the drawing-room, sir ? My mistress 
is in the libery with the doctors, but I daresay she’ll see 
you presently.’ 

‘ Yes, I’ll wait. I hope Mr. Champion is not seriously 
ill ? ’ 

‘ No, sir. Only a general derangement, I believe. He 
has been complaining for some time. Master is getting 
on in years, you see, sir,’ added the butler, with the privil- 
ege of an upper servant. 

Getting on in years ? Yes, James Champion was no 
doubt upon the downward slope of the hill, but until this 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


99 


moment Gerard had never thought of him as mortal, as 
a factor that might some day vanish out of the sum of 
Edith’s life. The man seemed so fenced round and pro- 
tected by his wealth, and to be no more subject to sick- 
ness or death than a money-bag. 

He was shown into the drawing-room, where the palms 
and flowers and innumerable prettinesses scattered about 
the tables were dimly seen in the tempered light. No 
broad sunshine was ever allowed to glare into Mrs. 
Champion’s rooms. Only under the lower edge of the 
festooned silken blinds was the brightness of the summer 
day allowed to filter through a screen of yellow marguer- 
ites that quivered and glanced in the noon-day light. 

Gerard had the room to himself for nearly twenty 
minutes by the clock, and was beginning to lose patience, 
and to contemplate departure, when the silver-grey plush 
porterie was pushed aside and Edith Champion came 
into the room, dressed in a white muslin breakfast gown, 
and with a face that matched her gown. 

She came slowly towards him, as he advanced to meet 
her, looking at him with a curious earnestness — 

‘ How pale you are,’ he said. ‘ I was shocked to hear 
that Mr. Champion was ill.* I hope it is nothing serious V 

‘ It is serious ; very serious ! ’ she said, and then she put 
up her hands before her face, and tears streamed from 
beneath her jewelled fingers. 

‘ I am thinking how good he has been to me — how 
liberal, how indulgent, and how little I have ever done 
for him in return,’ she said, with unaffected emotion. ' I 
am full of remorse when I think of my married life.’ 

‘ My dear Edith,’ he said, taking her hand ; ' indeed you 
wrong yourself. You have done nothing of which you 
need be ashamed.’ 

^ I have always tried to think that, on my knees in 
church,’ she said. ‘ I have taught myself to believe that 
there was no guilt in my life. Indeed, it seemed blame- 
less compared with the lives of women I know ; women 


100 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 


with whom the world finds no fault. But I know now 
that I have been a wicked wife/ 

‘But Edith ! ’ returning naturally to the habit of a for- 
mer time in his compassion for her grief, ‘ you have never 
failed in your duty. There has been no shame in our 
friendship. It was natural that you and I, who are 
young, and who were once lovers, should take pleasure in 
each others society. Mr. Champion has seen us together ; 
he has never suspected evil/ 

‘ No ; he is utterly without jealousy or suspicion. Per- 
haps that is because he has never really cared for me/ she 
said, as if reasoning with herself, ‘ but he has been always 
kind and indulgent, ready to gratify my lightest whim, 
treating me like a queen. And now I feel that I have 
been cold and ungrateful, indifferent to his feelings and 
inclinations, going my own way in blind self-indulgence.’ 

‘ My dear Edith, be assured this remorse is uncalled 
for. You have been an excellent wife for Mr. Champion, 
who — who is not an emotional person, and would be 
only bored by a romantic devotion. But is the case really 
so bad ? Is your husband dangerously ill V 

‘ There is no doubt the case is hopeless. He cannot 
live long — perhaps a year, at* most two years. He has 
known for some time that he was out of health. He con- 
sulted a doctor in Brussels, who rather scared him by his 
hints of evil. He came home out of spirits, very despond- 
ing about himself, and last night he sent for his doctor, 
and arranged a consultation with a specialist for this 
morning. Both doctors have been with me telling me 
much more than they dared tell my husband. They have 
spoken fair words to him, poor, dear man, but they have 
told me the truth. He cannot last more than two years. 
All that their science can do, all that healing springs and 
mountain air, and severe regimen and careful nursing can 
do, is to spin out the weak thread of life for a year or 
two at most. He is only fifty-five, Gerard, and he has 
toiled hard for his wealth. It seems cruel for him to bt 3 
taken away so soon.’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 101 


‘ Death is always cruel/ Gerard answered vaguely. ‘ I 
never thought of Mr. Champion as a man likely to die 
before the Scriptural threescore and ten.' 

‘Nor 1/ said Edith. ‘ God knows I have never calcu- 
lated upon his death/ 

There was a silence as they sat side by side, her pale 
cheeks wet with tears, her hands clasped upon her knee, 
he sorely embarrassed, feeling all that was painful in 
their position. 

‘ Is it true about this fortune of yours ? ' she asked, 
after a long pause. 

‘ Yes, the thing is a reality. I am beginning to believe 
in it myself. I was coming to you this morning to ask 
you to come and help me to choose a house.' 

‘ You are going to take a house ? ' she exclaimed, ‘ that 
means you are going to be married.' 

‘ Nothing of the kind. Why should not a bachelor who 
can afford it, amuse himself by creating a home and a 
fireside ? ' 

‘ Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid,' she murmured. ‘ I know 
all the women will run after you. I know how desperate 
they are when a rich marriage is the prize for which they 
are competing. Gerard, I think you have cared for me 
always — a little — in all these years.' 

‘ You know that I have been your slave/ he answered. 
‘ Without any pretensions that could wrong Mr. Cham- 
pion I have gone on blindly adoring j^ou, as much your 
lover as I was before you jilted me.' 

‘ Oh, Gerard, I was not a jilt. I was made to marry 
Mr. Champion. You can't imagine what influences are 
brought to bear upon a girl who is the youngest member 
of a large family — the preaching of mother and father, 
and aunts and uncles, and worldly-wise cousins, and elder 
sisters. It is the constant dropping that wears out a stone, 
the everlasting iteration. They told me I should spoil 
your life as well as my own. They painted such awful 
pictures of our future — cheap lodgings — exile — and then 


102 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


perhaps the workhouse — or worse, even — suicide. I 
thought of that picture in Frith’s “ Road to Ruin ” — the 
wretched husband alone in a garret, preparing to shoot 
himself. Gerard, I thought of you ruined and penniless 
like that man, contemplating suicide.’ # 

Gerard smiled curiously, remembering how only a few 
days ago he had contemplated, and even resolved, upon 
that last act in the tragedy of failure. 

Edith Champion had risen in her agitation, and was 
moving restlessly about the room. She turned suddenly 
in V'Gr pacing to and fro, and came towards Gerard, who 
had taken up his hat and stick, preparatory to departure. 

‘Tell me once more that you do not mean to marry — 
yet awhile ? ’ she said, with feverish intensity. 

‘ Believe me there is nothing further from my thoughts.’ 

‘ And you are not weary of me ? I am still as much to 
you as I was years ago when we were engaged.’ 

‘ You are and have been all the world to me since first 
we met/ he answered tenderly. 

‘ Then you can promise me something, Gerard. If that 
is true — if I am indeed your only love — it cannot hurt 
you to promise/ she faltered, drawing nearer to him, lay- 
ing a tremulous hand upon his shoulder, and looking at 
him with tearful eyes. 

‘ To promise what, dearest ? ’ 

‘ That you will not marry anyone else — that you will 
wait till — till I am free. Oh, Gerard, don’t think me 
cruel because I count upon that which must be. I mean 
to do my duty to my husband ; I mean to be a better 
wife to him than I have ever been ; less selfish, less given 
over to worldly pleasures, luxury and show — more 
thoughtful of him and his comfort. But the end must 
come before very long. The doctors told me to be pre- 
pared. It may come soon and suddenl}^ — it must come 
before I am two years older. I shall not be an old wo- 
man even then, Gerard,’ she said, smiling through her 
tears, knowing herself his junior by a year or so, ‘and I 


Thc^ World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


103 


hope I shall not be an ugly woman. Will you promise 
to wait ? ’ 

‘ Willingly, Edith, were the years ten instead of two/ 

‘ Will you promise ? ’ 

‘ Yes, I promise.’ 

‘ It is an oath/ she said. ‘ Say that 3^ou will be true to 
me by all you hold most sacred in this world and the next, 
as you are a man of honour/ 

‘ As I am a man of honour, I will marry you and none 
other. Will that satisfy you ? ’ 

‘ Yes, yes ! ’ she cried, hysterically ; ‘ I am content. 
Nothing else would have given me peace. I have been 
tormenting myself ever since I heard of your fortune. I 
hated the poor old man whose gratitude enriched you. 
But now I can be at rest ; I can trust implicitly in your 
honour. I am happy now, Gerard, and I can do my duty 
to my husband, undisturbed by cares and anxieties about 
the future. We shall not meet so often as we have done, 
perhaps. I shall go less into society ; my life will be less 
frivolous, but you will still be “ Tami de la maison,” won’t 
3"ou, Gerard ? I shall see you oftener than anyone else ? ’ 

‘ You shall see me as often as you and Mr. Champion 
like to invite me. But tell me more about him. Is it 
the heart that is wrong ? ’ 

^Oh, it is a complication — weak heart, over- worked 
brain, gouty tendency, and other complications. You 
know how strong he looks, what a solid block of a man. 
Well, he is like a citadel that has long been undermined, 
which may fall at any time, perhaps without warning, or 
may crumble slowly, inch by inch. The doctors told me 
much that I could not understand, but the main fact is 
only too clear. He is doomed.’ 

‘ Does he know ? Have they told him ? ’ 

‘ Not half what they told me. He is not to be alarmed. 
Most of the evil has arisen from over- work — the strain 
and fever of the race for wealth — and while he has been 
wasting his life in the effort to make money, I have been 


104 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


spending it, oh, how recklessly ! I am full of remorse 
when I think that I have been spending, not money, but 
my husband’s life/ 

‘ My dear Edith, it is his metier, his one amusement and 
desire to make money, and as for your extravagance, it 
has been after his own heart. A less costly wife would 
not have suited him/ 

‘ Yes, that is quite true. He has always encouraged me 
to spend money. But it is sad, all the same. He did not 
know that money meant his heart’s blood. It has been 
going drop by drop.’ 

‘ We spend our lives as we live them, Edith,’ Gerard 
answered, gloomily, ‘all strong passion means so much 
loss. We cannot live intensely and yet live long. You 
know Balzac’s story, “ La Peau de Chagrin.” ’ 

‘ Yes, yes, a terribly sad story.’ 

‘ Only an allegory, Edith. We are all living as Raphael 
de Valentin lived, although wo have no talisman to mark 
the waste of our years. Good-bye ; you will come and 
help me to choose my house, in a few days, will you 
not ? ’ 

‘ Yes, in a few days. When I have recovered from the 
shock of this morning.’ 

He went out into the broad bright sunshine, agitated, 
but by no means unhappy. 

It was a relief to see the end of that dubious and not 
altogether delightful road along which he had been tra- 
velling, that primrose path of dalliance which had seemed 
to lead no whither. 

He had pledged himself for life, as surely as if he had 
vowed the marriage vow before the altar, or allowed him- 
self to be booked and docketted in a registrar s office. For 
a man of honour there could be no retreat from such a 
vow. Nothing but shame or death could cancel the pro- 
mise he had given. But he had no regret for having 
so promised. He had no foreshadowing of future evil. 
He had only confirmed by a vow the bondage into which 


The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil, 105 


he had entered seven years ago, when all life lay new and 
untried before him. This woman was still to him the 
dearest of all women, and he was willing to be bound 
to her. 


CHAPTER VII. 



A SHADOW ACROSS THE PATH. 

HE house-agents had been more truthful than 
their kind are wont to be, and the house which 
Mr. Hillersdon had been invited to inspect 
more nearly realized their description than 
houses generally do. Of*course it was not all 
that he wanted ; but it possessed capabilities, and 
it stood in grounds which are becoming daily more 
difficult to find on the south side of Hyde Park. 
It was an old house, and somewhat dismal of aspect, the 
garden being shut in by high wails, and overshadowed by 
timber; but Gerard was pleased with that air of seclu- 
sion which would have repelled many people, and he saw 
ample scope for improvement in both house and grounds. 
He closed with the owner of the lease on the following 
day, and he had Roger Larose at work upon plan and 
specification without an hours delay.' The house belonged 
to the period when all fa9ades of important houses were 
Italian, and Gerard insisted upon the Italian idea being 
carried out in the improved front and expanded wings. 

‘Let there be no mixture of styles/ he said, ‘that is 
anathema maranatha in my mind. Above all, be neither 
Flemish nor Jacobean— the school has been overdone. 
Let your portico be light and graceful, yet severe; and 
give me a spacious loggia upon the fiist floor, between 
your new wings, which wdll consist each of a single room 
— billiard -room on one side and music-room on tho otheff 


106 


The Wovldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


The delighted Larose assured his client that the Italian 
school was his passion, and that he, too, was weary of the 
oriels and bays, the turrets and angles, cupolas and quaint- 
ness of the flamboyant Flemish, miss-called Queen Anne. 
He took his designs to Mr. Hillersdon within twenty-four 
hours after their inspection of the premises, and the new 
front and wings looked charming upon paper. There was 
no question of competition, which would involve delay. 
Gerard begged that the designs might be given to the best 
builder in London, and carried out with the utmost rapid- 
ity compatible with good work. 

' I must have everything flnished before November,’ he 
said. 

Roger Larose urged that it was hardly possible that 
two large rooms, and a new fa9ade, with portico, loggia, 
and classic pediment, to say nothing of various minor im- 
provements, could be completed in so short a time. 

‘ Nothing is impossible to a man of energy with ample 
funds at his disposal,’ answered Gerard. 

‘ If your plans cannot be carried out in four months, my 
dear Larose, they are useless; and I will occupy the house 
as it now stands.’ 

The commission was too good to be lost, and Larose 
promised to achieve the impossible. 

‘ I don’t believe such a thing was ever done before, ex- 
cept for Aladdin,’ he said. 

‘ Consider me Aladdin, if you like, but do what I want.’ 

The garden was Gerard’s own peculiar care. The land- 
scape gardener whom he called in wanted to cut down 
more than half the trees — limes and chestnuts of more 
than a century’s growth — upon the pretence that they 
darkened the house, and that a smooth lawn and geomet- 
rical flower beds were to be preferred to spreading bran- 
ches under which no turf could live. Gerard would not 
sacrifice a tree. 

‘ Y^ou will lay down fresh turf early in April every 
year,’ he said, ‘ and with care we must make it last till 
the end of July.’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 107 


The nurseryman booked the order, and felt that this 
was a customer worthy his best consideration. 

* And you will supply me with palms and orange trees, 
standard rhododendrons, and other ornamental plants 
every season. It will be your business to see that they 
do well while the season lasts.’ 

^ Exactly, sir, I perfectly understand your views. The 
lawn is considerably contracted by that belt of timber, 
but we can make a fine show of oranges in tubs, standard 
rhododendrons, and hardy palms in the portico and on the 
lawn, and you will retain your lime grove, which is, no 
doubt, an enjoyable feature of the grounds, a remarkable 
feature .in grounds so near London.’ 

For the furnishing of his house Mr. Hillersdon consulted 
the man who had dictated her taste to Mrs. Champion. 
The source of a lady’s taste and knowledge becomes for- 
gotten after a year or two, and she takes credit to herself 
for having evolved her surroundings entirely from her 
inner consciousness. But on being asked about her views 
as to furniture, Mrs. Champion suggested the employment 
of Mr. Callander, a gentleman who made it his business 
to create homes of taste for those who could afford to 
carry out his ideal. 

‘ One has ideas of one’s own, of course,’ said Edith 
Champion. ‘ I was full of original ideas for my drawing- 
rooms and morning-room, but I found it very difficult to 
get them carried out. Tradespeople are so stupid. Mr. 
Callander helped me immensely with drawings and sug- 
gestions. I should certainly go to him.’ 

Grerard took her advice, and went to Mr. Callander, of 
whom Larose declared that he was th^ only man in Lon- 
don who had any taste in furniture. 

To this gentleman the millionaire explained his desires 
very briefly. 

‘ My house is to be severely Italian,’ he said, ‘and I 
want you to furnish it as if it were a villa between Flor- 
ence and Fiesole, and as if I were Leonado di Medici.’ 


108 Tlie Worlds The Fleshy and The Devil, 


' And is expense to be no more considered than if you 
were one of the Medici/ 

‘ You can spend as much as you like, but you must not 
make any display of wealth. I have come unexpectedly 
into a fortune, and I don't want people to point to me as 
a nouveau riche.' 

‘Your house shall be furnished with a subdued splen- 
dour which shall make people think that your surround- 
ings have descended to you from a Florentine ancestor. 
There shall be nothing to suggest newness, or the display 
of unaccustomed wealth/ 

‘You are evidently an artist, Mr. Callander. Try to 
realize the artistic ideal in all its purity. But, remember, 
if you please, there are two rooms on the first floor, to the 
left of the staircase, which I mean to furnish myself, and 
for which you need not provide anything/ 

It was now the third week in July, and London was 
beginning to put on its deserted aspect. Three weeks 
ago it had been a work of difficulty to cross from one side 
of Bond-street to the other; but now crossing the most 
fashionable thoroughfares was as easy and leisurely a 
matter as a stroll in summery meads. Everybody was 
leaving town or talking of leaving, and dinners and balls 
were becoming a memory of the past, except such small 
dinners as may be given to the chosen few during a period 
of transition. Goodwood was over, and after Goodwood 
the tocsin of retreat is sounded. 

Gerard dined in a party of four at Hertford-street. 
Mrs. Gresham had returned for a final glimpse of London, 
after a fortnight's severe duties in her husband's parish. 
He was Vicar of a curious old settlement in Suffolk, a 
little town which had been a seaport, but from which the 
sea had long since retired, perhaps disgusted with the 
dulness of the place. 

She was delighted to see Mr. Hillersdon again, and he 
could but note the increased fervour of her manner since 
his improved fortunes. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


109 


‘ I hope you have forgiven me for my premature appli- 
cation about the chancel/ she said, plumping herself down 
upon the causeuse where he had seated himself, after talk- 
ing for a few minutes with his host. ‘It was dreadfully 
premature, 1 know ; but if you could see our dear, quaint, 
old church, with its long narrow nave and lofty roof, I’m 
sure you would be interested. Do you know anything 
about church architecture in Suffolk ? ’ 

‘I blush to say it is one of the numerous branches of 
my education which have been totally neglected.’ 

‘ What a pity ! Our East Anglian churches are so truly 
interesting. Perhaps you will come down and see us at 
Sandyholme some day ? ’ 

‘Is Sandyholme Mr. Gresham’s parish ? ’ 

‘ Yes; we have the dearest old Vicarage, with only one 
objection — there are a good many earwigs in summer. 
But then our earwigs are more than counterbalanced by 
our roses. We are on a clay soil, don’t you know ? I do 
hope you will come some Saturday and spend Sunday 
with us. You would like Alec’s sermon, I know; and 
for a little Suffolk town our choir is not so very bad. I 
give up two evenings a week to practice with them. You 
will think about it, now, Mr. Hillersdon, won’t you V 
‘ Yes, certainly I will think about it,’ answered Gerard, 
meaning never to do more. 

He had not been thinking very intently upon the lady’s 
discourse while she babbled on, for his thoughts had been 
engrossed by Mr. Champion, who was standing on the 
hearthrug, with his back to an arrangement of orchids 
which filled the fire-place, and fora man of chilly temper- 
ament ill-replaced the cheery fire. He was indeed what 
his wife had called him — a solid block of a man, short, 
sturdy, with massive shoulders and broad chest, large 
head and bull-neck, sandy-haired, thick-featured, the in- 
dications of vulgar lineage in every detail. A man who 
had made his own career, evidently, and who had sacri- 
ficed length of years in the endeavour to push his way 


110 The World j The Flesh, and The Devil. 


ahead of his fellow men ; a resolute, self-sufficient, self- 
contained man, proud of his success, confident of his own 
merits, not easily jealous, but, it might be, a terrible man 
if betrayed. Not a man to shut his eyes to a wife’s 
treachery, once suspected. 

Of ill-health the tokens were of the slightest — a livid 
tinge under the eyes and about the coarsely moulded 
mouth ; a flaccidity of the muscles of the face, and a dul- 
ness in the tarnished eyeballs, were all the marks of that 
slow and subtle change which had been creeping over the 
doomed victim during the last few years, unnoted by 
himself or those about him. 

At dinner the talk was chiefly of the approaching de- 
parture. Mr. and Mrs. Champion were going to Mont 
Oriol. 

‘ You’ll look us up there, I suppose, Hillersdon,’ said 
Champion ; ‘ my wife could hardly get on without you ; 
you are almost as necessary to her as her dachshunds.’ 

‘Yes, I daresay I shall find my way to Mont Oriol. I 
am by nature irresolute. You and Mrs. Champion have 
often saved me the trouble of deciding on my holiday 
haunts.’ 

‘ And now that you are rich I suppose that you will be 
idler than ever,’ suggested Champion. 

‘ Upon my word, no. My case seemed too hopeless for 
improvement while I was poor, and the stern neoessity 
to earn money benumbed any small capacity I may have 
had for writing a readable story.’ 

‘ You wrote one that delighted everybody,’ interposed 
Mrs. Gresham, but who dimly remembered the plot of his 
novel, and was hardly sure of the title. 

‘ But now that I need no longer write for bread my 
fancy may have a new birth. At anyrate, it need not 
dance in fetters.’ 

Mr. Champion went off* to his whist club after dinner. 
He played whist at the same club every evening during 
the London season, unless peremptorily called upon to 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 111 

accompany his wife to some festive gathering. He was 
a very silent man, and had never been fond of society, 
though he liked to have a fine house and a handsome 
wife, and to give dinners which were very respectable, and 
even smart people, considered it a privilege to eat. His 
greatest pleasure was found in the city, his chief relaxa- 
tion the whist table. 

" Don't be late, James/ said his wife to him, kindly, as 
he muttered something about stepping round to his club, 
‘ your doctor makes such a strong point of your getting a 
long night’s rest.’ 

‘ If my doctor could give me capacity to sleep, I should 
set a higher value on his advice/ said Champion, ‘ but 
you need not be afraid, I shall be home at eleven.’ When 
he was gone Mrs. Gresham was sent to the piano in the 
inner diawing-room, and Edith and Gerard were practi- 
cally tete-a-t§te. Cousin Rosa was very fond of music, 
and still fonder of her own playing. 

She at once attacked Mendelssohn’s Capriccio, and the 
other two drew nearer to the verandah, and the perfume 
of the flowers, and the cool starlit street, and began to 
talk. 

" I have been thinking a great deal about you lately,’ 
said Edith, and there was the sound of anxiety in her 
voice. 

‘ It is very good of you to keep me in your thoughts.’ 

‘ Good of me ! I cannot help myself. If I did not care 
for you more than I care for anyone else in the world, 
the strangeness of our position would make me think 
about you. I have been full of such curious thoughts : 
but perhaps that is only because I have been reading La 
Peau de Chagrin again, after having almost forgotten the 
story. It is a horrid story.’ 

‘ No, no, Edith, a magnificent story, full of profoundest 
philosophy.’ 

‘ No, it is only full of gloom. Why is that young man 
to die, simply because he has inherited a fortune ? The 


112 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


story is dreadful, like a haunting, horrible dream. I can 
see that unhappy young man — so gifted, so handsome — 
sitting face to face with that hideous talisman, which di- 
minishes with his every wish, and marks how his young 
life is wasting away. I have not been able to get the 
story out of my mind.’ 

’ You are too impressionable, my dear Edith ; but I own 
the story has a gloomy fascination which makes it difS- 
cult to forget. It was the book which established Honor^ 
de Balzac’s fame, and it seems to me that the hero is only 
a highly coloured image of the author, who wasted life 
and genius as feverishly as Raphael de Valentin — living 
with the same eager intensity, working with the same 
fervid concentration, and dying in the zenith of his power, 
though by no means in the bloom of his youth.’ 

" Was not Alfred de Musset of the same type ? ’ ‘ Un- 
doubtedl}^ The type was common to the epoch. Byron 
set the example, and it was the fashion for men of genius 
to court untimely death. Musset, the greatest poet 
France has ever had, son of the morning, elegant, aristo- 
cratic, born to love and to be loved, after a youth of sur- 
passing brilliancy, wasted the ripest years of manhood in 
the wine shops of the Quartier Latin, and was forgotten 
like a light blown out, long before the end of his wasted 
life. Our geniuses of to-day know better how to hus- 
band their resources. They are as careful of their genius 
as an elderly spinster of her Sunday gown.’ 

' How much better for them and for posterity,’ said 
Mrs. Champion. ‘ Please go on, Rosa,’ as Mrs. Gresham 
made a show of rising from the piano, ‘ Chopin is always 
delightful.’ 

‘ So he is ; but I have been playing Rubinstein,’ replied 
Rosa, severely. 

‘ Then do play that sweet prelude of Chopin’s in A flat 
major.’ 

‘ Why, I played it ten minutes ago,’ answered the lady 
at the piano. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


113 


‘ How sweet of you. You know how I adore it/ an- 
swered Edith, unabashed, and immediately went on talk- 
ing. 

‘ I daresay it is only the effect of that horrible story/ 
she said, "but I have been feeling absurdly morbid of 
late, and I can t help tormenting myself about your 
health.' 

‘A most futile torment, since I am perfectly well," 
Gerard answered, irritably. 

I No doubt, no doubt ; but my husband seemed perfectly 
well last year, and yet there was all manner pf organic 
mischief. I know you are not strong, and since you 
came into your fortune you have been looking dreadfully 
ill.' 

"So my mother told me. Gold has evidently a bad 
effect upon the complexion and yet the old physicians 
considered it a fine tonic, boiled in broth.' 

"I want you to do me a favour, Gerard.' 

" Command my devotion in all things, great and small.' 

"Oh, it is not a great thing. You will come to Mont 
Oriol, of course.' 

" Yes. If that is all you were going to ask — ' 

"It is something more than that. Before you leave 
London I want you to consult the cleverest physician 
you can find. The man who knows most about brain, 
and heart, and lungs.' 

" A wide field for scientific exploration. I suppose you 
really mean the man who has contrived to make himself 
the fashion — the man to whom it is the right thing to go.' 

" No, no. I am not the slave of fashion. Go to some- 
one who will understand you — who will be able to advise 
you how to enjoy your life, without wasting it as Balzac 
and Musset did.' 

" Have no fear. I am no Balzac or Musset. I have no 
Byronic tire consuming me within; and be assured I 
mean to husband my life — for the sake of the years to 
come — which should be very happy.' 


114 The World, The Mesh, and The Devil. 


He took up the hand lying loose in her lap, the beauti- 
ful, carefully cherished hand which the winds of heaven 
never visited too roughly, and bent down to kiss it, just 
as the moonlight sonata came to a close. 

‘ Oh, do go on, Rosa. Some more Mendelssohn, please.” 

With perhaps the faintest touch of malice Mrs. Gresham 
attacked the wedding march, with a crash that made the 
lamp glasses shiver. 

' Do you know of any clever physician ? ’ asked Edith. 

^ I have never needed a physician since I was eleven 
years old, and the only famous doctor I know is the man 
who saved my life then, Dr. South, the childrens doctor. 
I have half a mind to go to him.’ 

. ‘ A child’s doctor,’ said Edith, shrugging her shoulders. 

‘ Children have hearts, and brains, and lungs. I dare- 
say Dr. South knows something about those organs, even 
in adults.’ 

^ You will go to him to-morrow morning, then — and if 
he is not satisfied he will advise another opinion. I should 
have preferred the new German doctor, whom everybody 
is consulting, and who does such wonders with hypnotism, 
Dr. Geistrauber. They say he is a most wonderful man.’ 

‘ They are an authority not always to be relied upon. 
1 would rather go to Dr. South, who saved my life when 
I was in knickerbockers.’ 

‘ Were you so very ill then ? ’ asked Mrs. Champion, 
tenderly interested even in a crisis of seventeen years 
ago. 

‘ Yes ; I believe I was as bad as a little lad can be, and 
yet live. When I try to remember my illness it seems 
only a troubled dream, through which Dr. South’s kindly 
face looms large and distinct. My complaint was inflam- 
mation of the lungs, a malady which Dr. South said most 
children take rather kindly ; but in my case there were 
complications. I was like Mrs. Gummidge, and the dis- 
ease was worse for me than for other children. I was as 
near death’s door as anyone can go without crossing the 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


115 


threshold ; and my people believe to this day that but 
for Dr. South I should have entered at that fatal door. 
It was a pull for a man of my father s means to bring 
down the great children’s doctor, but the dear old dad 
never regretted the heavy fee ; and here I am to tell the 
story, of which I knew very little at the time, for I was 
delirious all through the worst of my illness, and I be- 
lieve there was one stage of my illness during which I 
associated Dr. South’s fine gray head — prematurely gray 
— with a great white elephant of Siam of which I had 
been reading in “ Peter Parley’s Annual.” ’ 

‘Poor dear little fellow ! ’ sighed Edith Champion, with 
retrospective affection. 

‘ How sweet of you to pity me ! I find myself pitying 
my own small image in that dim and troubled time, as if 
it were anybody’s child. The complications were dread- 
ful — pleurisy, pneumonia ; I believe the local doctor 
found a new name for my complaint nearly every day, till 
Dr. South gave his decisive verdict, and then pulled me 
through by his heroic treatment. ' Yes, I will go to him 
to-morrow ; not because I want medical advice, but be- 
cause I should like to see my old friend again.’ 

‘ Go to him ; pray go to him/ urged Edith, ‘ and tell 
him everything about yourself.’ 

‘ My dear Edith, I have no medical confession to make. 
I am notill.’ 

Mrs. Gresham had played herself out, for the time be- 
ing, and came into the front drawing-room as the foot- 
man appeared ivith tea a la Fran§ais — tea that knits up 
the ragged sleeve of care, tired Nature’s nurse, for duch- 
esses as well as for washerwomen. 

The talk became general, or became, rather, a lively 
monologue on the part of Rosa Gresham, who loved her 
own interpretation of Chopin and Charvenka, but loved 
the sound of her own voice better than any music that 
ever was composed. 

Mi% Champion came in a few minutes after eleven. 


116 The World, The Flesh, and The Dtvil, 


looking tired and white after an hour and a half at the 
whist club, and Hillersdon went out as his host came in 
— went out, but not home. He walked eastward, and 
looked in at two late clubs, chiefly impelled by his desire 
to meet Justin Jermyn, but there was no sign of the 
Fate-reader either at the Magnolia or the Small-Hours, 
and no one whom Hillersdon questioned about him had 
seen him since Lady Fridolines party. 

‘ He has gone to some Bad in Bohemia/ said Larose ; 
‘ a Bad with a crackjaw name, I believe he invents a 
name and a Bad every summer, and then goes quietly and 
lives up the country between Broadstairs and Birching- 
ton, and basks all day upon some solitary stretch of sand, 
or on the edge of some lonely cliflf, where the North Sea 
breezes blow above the rippling ripeness of the wheat, 
and lies in the sunshine, and plans fresh impostures for 
the winter season. No one will sec him or hear of him 
any more till November, and then he will come back and 
tell us what a marvellous place Rumpelstiljkinbad is for 
shattered nerves ; and he will describe the scenery, and 
the hotel, and the hot springs, and the people — ay, al- 
most as picturesquely as I could myself,’ concluded La- 
rose, with his low, unctuous chuckle, which was quite 
different from Jermyii s elfin laughter, and as much a 
characteristic of the man himself. 

Hillersdon stayed late at the Small Hours, and drank 
just a little more dry champagne than his mother or Mrs. 
Champion would liaire approved, women having narrow 
notions about .he men they love, notions which seem 
hardly ever to pass the restrictions of the nursery. He 
did not drink because he liked the wine, nor even for 
jovialit3^’s sake ; but for a desire to get 'away from him- 
self and from a sense of irritation which had been caused 
by Mrs. Champion s suggesaions of ill-health. 

‘ I shall be hypnotised into an invalid if people persist 
in telling me I am ill/ he said to hirnseif, dwelling need- 
lessly upon Edith Champion’s anxieties. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 117 


The market carts were lumbering into Covent Garden 
when he went home, and as the natural result of a late 
night, and an unusual amount of champagne, he slept ill 
and woke with a headache. He breakfasted upon a 
devilled biscuit and a cup of green tea, and was in Har- 
ley-street before eleven o'clock. 

Having made no appointment, Mr. Hillersdon had to 
undergo the purgatory of the waiting-room, where an 
anxious mother was trying to beguile the impatience of a 
ricketty son with picture books, and, in her gentle solici- 
tude, ottering a curious contrast to a more fashionably 
dressed mother, whose thoughts seemed to be rather with 
an absent dressmaker than with her sickly, overgrown 
girl, to whom she spoke occasionally in accents of reproof, 
or in lachrymose complaint at having to wait so long for 
Dr. South, while Madame Viola was no doubt waiting for 
her — ‘ and when I do get to Bruton-street very likely she 
won t see me,' lamented the lady, in an undertone. ‘ It's 
all your fault, Clara, for catching cold. You are so idiotic 
about yourself. I daresay you will be ordered off to some 
horribly expensive place in Switzerland. Doctors have 
no consideration for one.' 

The girl's only reply to this maternal wailing was a 
little hacking cough, which recurred as often as a comma. 
Her wan face and rather shabby frock contrasted with 
the mother's artistic bloom and smart morning gown. 
Hillersdon felt a sense of relief when the man in black 
looked in at the door, and summoned mother and daughter 
with a mysterious nod, which seemed pregnant with 
mournful augury, although it meant nothing but ^ your 
turn.' 

The anxious lady impressed him so much more pleas- 
antly that, as time hung heavy, he made friends with the 
boy, helped to entertain him by presenting the illustra- 
tions of a zoological book in a new light for the next 
quarter of an hour, and then the ricketty boy and his 
mamma were summoned, and more patients came in, and 


118 The World, The Flesh, and 2 he Devil. 


Hillersdon tried to lose his consciousness of the passing 
moments in the pages of a stale ‘ Saturday Review/ — 
moments too distinctly measured by the ticking of a very 
fine Sherraton clock, which stood sentinel in a niche by 
the sideboard. 

The man in black came for him at last, as it were the 
ferryman ready for a new passenger, and he was ushered 
into the presence of Dr. South, whom he found in a 
spacious and lofty room at the back of the house, lighted 
by a large window, which commanded a small garden, 
shut in by ivy-covered walls. 

The gray head and genial smile brought back a vision 
of a little bed near a sunny window, and summer breezes 
blowing over a head that seemed to scorch the pillow 
where it lay. 

He recalled the childish illness and the Devonian 
Rectory to Dr. South, who remembered his journey by 
the night mail, and his rjrrival at daybreak in the still- 
ness of a summer Sabbath morning — no labourer going 
out to the fields, only the song of the lark high up in the 
infinite blue above the ripening wheat. Dr. South had 
not forgotten that long summer day, in which, dike many 
another medical Alcides he had fought with death, 
wrestled with and thrown the grisly shade, and had 
gone back to his hospital and his London patients, leav- 
ing hope and comfort behind him. 

‘ I know I was very much interested in the case/ he 
said ; ‘ your mother was such a sweet woman. She has 
been spared to you, I hope.’ 

" Yes, thank God, she is in excellent health — a young 
woman still in mind and habits.’ 

And then he told Dr. South how, being just a little 
uneasy about his own constitution — though with no con- 
sciousness of any evil — he had come to be overhauled by 
the physician, whose skill he knew by experience. 

‘ Please consider me a little lad again/ he said lightly, 
‘ and knock my chest about as you did when I was lying 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil 119 

in a troubled dream, making nonsense pictures of all my 
surroundings/ 

‘ We shall not find much amiss, I hope,' replied the 
doctor with his kindly smile. ‘ Take off your coat and 
waistcoat, if you please.' 

The auscultation was careful and prolonged. There 
was none of that pleasantly joerfunctory air with which 
the physician dismisses a good case. Dr. South seemed 
bent on exploring every square inch of that well set-up 
frame, from shoulders to waist, with bent head and steth- 
oscope at his ears. He concluded his examination with 
a faint sigh, which might mean only fatigue. 

‘ Do you find anything amiss ? ’ asked the patient, 
rather anxiously. 

‘ I cannot detect absolute organic mischief, but there 
is a certain amount of weakness in both heart and lungs. 
You have had some painful shock very lately, have you 
not ? Your nerves have been greatly shaken.' 

‘ I have had a great surprise, but it was pleasant rather 
than painful.' 

‘I rejoice to hear it, but the fact that a pleasant 
surprise should have so unhinged you is in itself a 
warning.' 

‘ How so ? ' 

^ It denotes highly strung nerves, and a certain want 
of stamina. To be frank with you, Mr. Hillersdon, yours 
is not what we call a good life, but many men of your 
constitution live to old age. It is a question of husband- 
ing your resources. With care, and a studious avoidance 
of all excesses, moral or physical, you may live long.' 

Gerard thought of the Peau de Chagrin. A studious 
avoidance of excess — in other words, a constant watch 
upon that red line upon the sheet of white paper which 
showed the shrinkage of the talisman. Little by little, 
with every hour of agitated existence, with every pas- 
sionate heart throb, and every eager wish, the sum total 
of his days would dwindle. 


120 The World, The Tlesh, and The Devil, 


" I have just come into a large fortune and am only 
beginning to live/ he said fretfully. ‘ It is hard to be 
told at this juncture that I have not a good life.’ 

‘ I cannot prophecy smooth things, Mr. Hillersdon. 
You come to me for the truth ? ’ 

‘ Yes, yes, I know, and I am grateful to you for your 
candour ; but still it is hard lines, you must allow.’ 

‘ It would be harder if j^ou were a struggling profes- 
sional man, and saw your career blighted at the outset. 
I am very glad to hear of your good fortune. With the 
resources and expedients of modern science — which are 
all at the command of wealth — you ought to live to be 
eighty.’ 

‘Yes, at the price of an unemotional life. I am to 
vegetate, not to live ! ’ 

He slipped the neatly papered guineas into the doctor’s 
hands, and then turning on the threshold he asked 
nervously : 

‘ Do you forbid me to marry, lest I should become the 
father of a consumptive progeny ? ’ 

‘ By no means. I find no organic mischief, as I told 
you. I would strongly advise you to marry. In a happy 
domestic life you would find the best possible environ- 
ment for a man of your somewhat fragile physique and 
highly nervous temperament. 

‘ Thanks ; that is encouraging, at any rate. Good day.’ 

After leaving the doctor Hillersdon strolled across 
Portland Place and into the Portland Road, where he 
made an exploration of the second-hand furniture shops, 
in search of certain objects which were to assist in reali- 
zing his idea as to those two rooms in his Italian villa 
which he had taken upon himself to furnish after his 
own lights. 

An hour’s peregrination from shop to shop resulted 
only in the purchase of one piece of furniture, a black 
oak cabinet, ostensibly of the sixteenth century, possibly 
a clever piece of patchwork put together last year. It 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


121 


satisfied Gerald Hillersdon because it closely resembled 
another black oak cabinet which he had seen lately. 

He had taken it into his head to reproduce for his own 
study and private den those two rooms in which he had 
sat at supper with Justin Jermyn, and where he had 
seen the vision of Hester Davenport ; rooms which per- 
haps had no tangible existence, dream-rooms, the shadow- 
pictures of a hypnotic trance. It pleased him to think 
that he could reproduce in solid oak and brass, in old 
Venetian glass and quaint Dutch pottery, the scene which 
might have been made up of shadows, since his failure to 
discover the house or the inn yard where he had supped 
with Jermyn had given a tinge of unreality to all his 
memories of that eventful night. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


'‘I BUILT MY SOUL A LOUDLY PLEASURE HOUSE.” 

IFE at Mont Oriol, for those who were not 
bound by their doctors to some constraining 
regimen of bathing and self-denial, was one 
perpetual holiday. Such visitors as Edith 
Champion lived only to amuse themselves — 
to drive to distant ruins — ride in the early morning 
when the sun-baked grass was cooled with dew, play 
cards or billiards, and dance in the evening. For 
Mr. Champion Mont Oriol meant hard work, and consid- 
erable self-denial — daily baths, a severe regimen as to 
meat and drink, and a strict avoidance of all business 
transactions, such transactions being the very delight of 
his life, the salt which gave life its savour, and without 
which the man felt himself already dead. 



122 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘ There are men who are dead from the waist down- 
wards/ he said one day, " and who have to be dragged 
about in bath chairs, or lifted in and out of a carriage. 

I don’t pity them, as long as they are allowed to write 
their own business letters. I am dead from the waist up- 
wards/ He had his secretary with him at Mont Oriol, 
and in spite of all prohibitions that falcon eye of his 
was never off the changes of the money market. He had 
telegrams from the Stock Exchange daily, in his own 
particular cypher, which was at once secret and economi- 
cal. There were days when thousands trembled in the 
balance, while he sat taking his sun-bath on the terrace 
in front of the hotel, and when the going down of the 
sun interested him only because it was to bring him tid- 
ings of loss or gain. 

‘Would you like a set of opals, Edie/ he asked, one 
day at afternoon tea, crumpling up the little bit of blue 
paper which lia I just been brought to him, ‘I have made 
three thousand by a rise in Patagonian Street Railways/ 

‘ A thousand thanks, but you forget the opals you gave 
me two years ago. I don’t think you could improve upon 
those.’ 

‘ Yes, I had forgotten them. They belonged to a Rus- 
sian Princess. 1 got them for about half their value. 
Then I suppose there is nothing I can give you ? ’ he 
asked, with a faint sigh, as if her indifference had sug- 
gested the impotence of wealth. 

‘ You are too good, I think not. I have everything in 
the world I care for.’ 

Mr. Champion and his wife had the handsomest suite 
of rooms in the hotel, and Grerard had taken the next 
best. Between them they absorbed an entire floor in one 
wing of the great white barrack. They were thus in a ^ 
manner secluded from the vulgar herd, and Gerard seemed 
as if staying on a visit with the Champions, since he was 
invited to use their salon as freely as his own, while he 
dined with them five days out of seven. He had his own 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


123 


servants with him, valet and groom, and he began to 
think that he too wanted a secretary, if it were only to 
write every day to architect or builder urging them to 
carry on their work without an hours loss. He was 
eager to be installed in his own house — eager to accum- 
ulate pictures and statuary, curios, books, plate — to taste 
the feverish rapture of spending his money. If, as Dr. 
South had hinted, his life was likely to be shorter than 
the average life, there was all the more reason why he 
should spend his money freely, why he should crowd into 
a few years all the enjoyment that wealth can buy — and 
yet even here there was peril. He had been warned 
against all fierce emotions. To prolong that feeble life 
of liis he must live temperately, and never pass the limits • 
of tranquil domestic life. 

It seemed to him that with this view he could hardly 
have done better for himself than in that compact which 
he had made with Edith Champion. In his relations 
with her there were no fiery agitations, no passionate im- 
patience. He loved her, and had loved her long-— per- 
haps a little more passionately when his love was a new 
thing, but not, he assured himself, more devotedly than he 
loved her now. He was secure of her love, secure also 
of her virtue, for had she not known how to respect her- 
self in this long apprenticeship to platonic affection. 
Their lives would glide smoothly on, till James Cham- 
pion, cared for and kindly treated to the last hour of his 
existence, should drop gently into the grave, decently 
mourned for such space of time and in such manner as the 
world exacts of well-bred widows; and then Edith and 
he would be married, and assume that commanding posi- 
tion in London and continental society which only a 
husband and wife whose views and culture exactly har- 
monize can ever attain. The prospect was in every way 
agreeable, and he could look forward to it without any 
quickened throbbing of his tired heart. Dr. South had 
called it a tired heart — a heart with which there was 


124 Tlie World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


nothing organically wrong, only the langour left by the 
strain of overwork. He could sit in the hotel garden tak- 
ing his sun-bath, and ])lacidly admiring the perfection of 
Edith s profile, shadowed by the broad leaved Leghorn 
hat, or t]\o. delicate arch of her instep in the high -heeled 
Parisian shoe, so eminently adapted for sitting still. 

And so the days went by at Mont Oriol, and nothing 
broke the monotony of luxurious idleness — a life such as 
Guinevere and her knights and ladies may have led at 
Camelot, when things were beginning to go rather badly 
at the Court of King xlrthur, a life of sensuous pleasures 
and dormant intellectuality — a life in which people talked 
about books, but rarely read, afifected a profound interest in 
‘advanced philanthropy, yet would have hardly risen from 
a low basket chair to save the life of a fellow man, a life 
in which heart and brain were only half awake, while 
the desire of the eye and the delight of the ear were para- 
mount. 

Pleasant as this holiday time was, Gerard rejoiced 
when it came to an end and he was free to return to Lon- 
don and look after his architect and builder. October 
was half gone when he arrived in his old shabby quarters 
near the church — lodgings at which his new servants 
looked with undisguised contempt. The builders were 
liai d at work in the house near the Park — Stamford House 
it had been called in the past, but it was to be known 
henceforward by the name of its new owner. The builders 
were working by night as well as by day, by the aid of 
the electric light which was already installed. Gerard 
went to see them at work on the night after his return, 
and to liis fancy there seemed something demoniac in the 
vision of these men swarming up and down ladders and 
balancing themselves upon narrow cornices in the weird 
light, and amidst the noise of many hammers. 

They were a little behind with their work, the clerk of 
the works admitted, but there had been a difficulty in 
getting good men, and he was determined only to have 
first-rate workmen upon a job of such importance. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


125 


‘ Depend upon it, you’ll be satisfied with the result, 
sir/ he said. ^ The alteration of the facade has been a 
very difficult job, I can assure you. It isn’t like begin- 
ning fair, you see. We have had to adapt the loggia to 
the existing front, and to avoid all appearance of patch- 
work. You’ll be pleased when it’s done.’ 

" Perhaps I shall, if I live long enough to see it/ answer- 
ed Gerard fretfully. ‘But judging from the present 
aspect of the house, I may be in my grave before it is 
finished.’ 

‘ Oh, indeed, sir, we are more forward than you may 
think. The interior decorations are going on simultane- 
ously. Things will come together in a day. The architect is 
thoroughly satisfied with the way the work is being done.’ 

‘No doubt; but the architect is not waiting to occupy 
the house, as I am.’ 

He stayed there for nearly two hours betwixt midnight 
and morning, going about with the clerk of the works 
amidst all the litter and confusion of painters and carpen- 
ters, glaziers and plumbers, a veritable pandemonium, in 
which fiends were passing to and fro with cauldrons of 
boiling lead, and pots of acrid-smelling paint, a scene of 
discordant noises, shrill whistling from divers whistlers, 
sounds of planes and hammer, chisel, and auger. It was 
out of this c aos his ideal mansion was to come, fresh as 
the world when the Creator saw that it was well. 

He went there again next day with Mrs. Champion and 
her niece — she had at least a dozen nieces — and took up 
one or another as capriciously as she chose her gloves. 
Boger Larose and the furniture man were there to meet 
them, and they all went over the house by daylight, 
peering into every corner, and discussing every detail, 
the mantelpieces, the stoves, the windows and window 
seats, moulding, panelling, painting, carving, glass stained, 
and glass Venetian, Bohemian, Belgian. 

Aunt and niece were both agreed that house and decora- 
tions would be quite too lovely. They did not attempt 


126 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


any more technical opinion. The niece, Miss Flora Bel- 
linger, went about with her petticoats held up and her 
shoulders and elbows contracted, murmuring ‘ Lovely, 
lovely,’ to everything, even the sink, and in deadly fear 
of wet paint. 

One suggestion Mrs. Champion ventured to make : 

‘ Be sure you have plenty of corners,’ she said to Mr. 
Larose ; ‘ quaint, odd angles, don’t you know — pretty 
little nooks that can be made Moorish, or Japanese, or 
Dutch, or Old English, just as one’s fancy may suggest.’ 

‘ My dear lady, you see the rooms,’ replied the architect 
gravely, ‘ and you see their angles. I cannot alter the 
shape of rooms that are practically finished.’ 

‘ That’s a pity. I thought you could have thrown in 
corners. The rooms are utterly lovely — but there are no 
quaint nooks.’ 

' I see, Mrs. Champion, that you hanker after a Flemish 
style, which has now become the property of the restaur- 
ants. Were you ever in the Ricardi Palace at Florence ? ’ 

‘ Yes, I know it well.’ 

‘ I don’t think you saw any quaint nooks or odd 
angles there, although you may find as many as you like 
in Earl’s Court.’ 

" Yes, I suppose they are getting common,’ sighed Mrs. 
Champiom; ‘ everything becomes common — everything 
pretty and fantastical, at least.’ 

After that searching inspection, which involved certain 
small emendations and final decisions, Gerard Hillersdon 
told himself that he would look no more upon his house 
until it all was finished, except those two rooms which 
he was to finish after his own devices. It would worry 
him too much to go there day after day only to see how 
slowly the British workman can work. Mrs. Champion 
and her husband were to spend November and December 
at Brighton, so Gerard went down to the Rectory, where 
mother and sister were full of delight when he told them 
that he had come to stay for at least a month 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil, 127 


He found the family at the Rectory rejoicing over the 
good fortune of Mr. Cumberland, who had been promoted 
from a rural curacy to a London living. The stipend 
was modest, but the parish was extensive, and included 
one of the worst and poorest districts in the great city — 
a labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys lying between 
the churches of St. Anne and St. Griles. It was in just 
such a parish as this that John Cumberland desired to 
labour. He was at heart a Socialist. He believed in the 
stringent rights of the poor and the responsibilities of the 
rich, and saw in the increasing luxury and costliness 
which marked the existence of the upper classes the sign 
of a degenerate people and a profligate age. In his new 
jjarish of St. Lawrence, Wardour-street, there were all 
those elements of life which most deeply interested him. 
It was a parish of mixed classes and divers nationalities, 
the chosen haunt of the impecunious exile, the ihilist 
and the Fenian, the Carbonaro and the Karl Marxian. 
It was a parish peopled by the intelligent British work- 
man, the self-educated and self-sufficient mechanic. 
Great blocks of buildings, erected at different periods, 
and showing diflferent stages of architectural and sanitary 
improvements, cast their mighty shadows over the lower 
level of slates and tiles that roofed the courts and alleys 
of the past. These were model lodging-houses, more or 
less admirable in their arrangements, and at their worst 
a considerable advance upon the wretched hovels that 
surrounded them. 

Here, too, in the parish of St. Lawrence the Martyr, 
was the well-known club for women who earned their 
bread by the sweat of their brow — needlewomen of all 
kinds, factory girls of divers industries, from jam and 
pickle making in Soho, to filling cartridges in the Gray’s 
Inn road — a club which was the centre of civilisation, 
improvement, and all refining influences, for hundreds of 
hard-working girls and women, and which had flourished 
exceedingly under the fostering care of Lady Jane Blen- 


128 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


heim, a woman who devoted her life to good works. 
John Cumberland was delighted at the prospect of hav- 
ing Lady Jane for his counsellor and ally ; nor was he in 
any way disheartened by the knowledge that he and his 
young wife were to begin their wedded life in a district 
which smart people would call ‘impossible.’ The Vicar- 
age of St. Lawrence was a substantially built early 
Georgian house, in Grreek-street, a street which was 
occupied by the very cream of modish society in the days 
of Chestertield and Bolingbroke, but which is now chiefly 
distinguished by French laundries and restaurants, 
Italian grocery, and foreign conspirators of various types 
and nationalities. 

The living was worth something under five hundred a 
year, but the Rector of Helmsleigh knew by experience 
how much of a clergyman s income has to be sacrificed to 
the claims of his parish, and how little may be left for 
bis own maintenance. He had, therefore, questioned the 
wisdom of allowing his daughter to marry a man whose 
only independent means consisted of a legacy of railway 
shares from a spinster aunt, which shares produced about 
a hundred and twenty pounds a year. He was also 
averse from the idea of Lilian’s lines being set in the 
smoky atmosphere of Soho. ‘ Let Jack Cumberland dree 
his weird under the shadow of Cross and Blackwell, and 
take his fill of work in a poor parish for the next two or 
three years,’ said the Rector, with his genial air, cheerily 
disposing of other people’s lives ; ‘ by that time he will 
have made himself a reputation as a powerful preacher, 
and something better will turn up — a fat living in a nice 
part of the country, where my pet can have her garden 
and glebe meadows.’ 

‘ Indeed, father, I don’t want a garden, and a sleepy, idle 
life, such as — as the very best people are content to lead in 
the country,’ answered Lilian, eagerly ; ‘ I would much 
rather work hard with Jack in a poor parish like St, 
Lawrence.’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


129 


• Ah, that is the way with young people,’ sighed the 
Rector, whose favourite maxim for the last twenty years 
had been that of Parson Dale, Quieta non movere, ‘ they 
are always wanting to go out and fight dragons. If they 
are not rampant for pleasure, tennis, dances, hunting, 
why then they are rampant for work — the girls want to 
be hospital nurses, the boys want to be East-end curates, 
or to go to Africa, or, at the first whisper of some pur- 
poseless, unnecessary war, they rush off* to enlist. Young 
people have no idea how good it is to take life quietly, 
and make the most of one’s allotted span.’ 

The young people in this instance were so resolute, and 
their elders so yielding, that it was finally agreed that 
Lilian and Jack should be married a year after he had 
read himself in at the church of St. Lawrence. A year 
would give him time to settle down in his parish, to put 
a good many crooked things straight, and get into a 
groove in which his life and Lilian’s might move quietly 
along, without over much worry or emotion. He would 
have time to furnish those gloomy old panelled rooms 
which to Lilian’s eyes were beautiful, fraught with de- 
lightful memories of patch and powder, lovely ladies in 
rustling brocade sacques, daintily emerging from their 
sedan chairs to trip lightly up the stone steps, while their 
running footmen quenched their torches in the iron ex- 
tinguishers. Thepanelled walls, the iron extinguishers were 
left, but who now has a running footman ? Duchess Geor- 
gina had six, six splendid over-fed creatures in costly plush 
and bullion, silk stockinged, powdered, beautiful, six to 
run in the mud beside her chair, and hover about her and 
protect her when she got out of it. Lilian was charmed 
at the thought of the oldfashioned I^ondon house, and the 
rapture of picking up quaint old cabinets and secretaires, 
and tables with claw and ball feet, to furnish withal. 
She was in no wise depressed by the notion of a year’s 
engagement. This time of courtship was such a happy 
time — a season of tenderest chivalry, and pretty trivial 


130 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


gifts, and small innocent pleasures which needed much 
planning beforehand, season of letters perpetual and unend- 
ing, letters about nothing, yet so delightful to the recipi- 
ent, letters written at midnight, letters pencilled hastily 
in the early morning — nay, one letter written in the 
vestry, which seemed a kind of sacrilege, but was not 
less esteemed on that account. 

' There are hours in which you are my religion, and I 
almost forget that I have any other,' said Jack, when his 
sweetheart reproached him for that vestry letter. 

Mr. Cumberland was still doing duty as curate of 
Helmsleigh when Gerard came on the scene. He was to 
assume his new duties shortly after Christmas. 

‘ Then Lilian can come and keep house for me/ said 
Gerard, ‘ aud then she will be able to see her lover every 
day, and I can help in the furnishing.' 

‘Oh, please don't,' cried his sister, ‘you would spoil all 
our fun. You have too much money. You would just 
say to an upholsterer, “ furnish,” and he would come with 
his men and take possession of — our house,' with a shy 
smile, and a blushing glance at her lover, ‘ and everything 
would be done splendidly, expensively, and as he liked, 
not as we like. No, dear Gerard, we are going to pick 
up our furniture bit by bit, and it is to be all as old as 
that wicked old George who shut up his poor wife in the 
Castle at Alden. We have begun already. We bought 
a walnut wood bureau with brass handles, in Exeter, the 
other day — so old — oh, so old — and all genuine.' 

‘ Except the handles,' said Cumberland, laughing : ‘ I 
shouldn't like to answer for the handles. They look very 
like having been put on last week.' 

‘ They have been newly lacquered, sir. You are dread- 
fully ignorant. The dear old drawers and pigeon holes 
and secret recesses smell of old papers — lost wills — mar- 
riage certificates upon which great fortunes depend — love 
letters — sermons preached a hundred and fifty years ago. 
That bureau is a romance in walnut wood, and if you 
could see the dirty old shop in which we found it — • 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 131 


* I am answered/ said Gerard ; ‘ the wealth of the Indies 
cannot give you half the pleasure you will find in bargain- 
hunting in dirty shops. Perhaps when you have found 
that most of your bureaus are spurious, and that you 
could have got better and truer antiques for less money 
at a West End upholsterer s your bargain-hunting will 
lose some of its zest. I will bide my time.’ 

It amused him a little, and interested him deeply to see 
how small a significance his wealth had in the eyes of 
his sister, as compared with her lover and her own out- 
look of genteel poverty in a crowded London parish. For 
this girl, deep in love with an enthusiast, and sharing 
his enthusiasm, wealth had no fascination. 

‘ You are too good/ she told her brother, when they two 
were alone, and he pressed her to accept a handsome 
dowry, ‘ but I shouldn’t care to have money settled upon 
me, for fear Jack should feel humiliated. He cannot 
afford to settle anything ; and I shouldn’t like the settle- 
ment to be onesided/ 

'But, my dear girl, that is all nonsense/ 

' Perhaps it is, only please let me have my own way. 
We are sure to want your help by and by, to build 
schools, or to improve the church, perhaps. There is sure 
to be some pressing want in the parish, and then we will 
appeal to you. And in the meantime, as we are to live 
among poor people, it is good for us to be poor. We shall 
be able to sympathise with them, and understand them 
all the better.’ 

Gerard argued no longer, but he meant that his sister 
should be dowered by him, all the same. She should not 
be poor, while he was inordinately rich. The settlement 
would have to be made. In the meantime he was glad 
that the marriage should be put off for a year, so that he 
might have this bright young creature for his companion 
in the new home whose splendour he thought of some- 
times with a thrill of apprehension. Would he not feel 
lonely in that large house until he could bring a wife 


132 The Worldj The Flesh, and The Devil, 


home, and all his wife’s feminine surroundings of cousins 
and bosom friends, with their flutter, and fuss, and life, 
and movement. A house occupied only by men has al- 
ways a gloomy atmosphere. There lacks the colour and 
frou frou of women’s brighter raiment. 

He pleaded with his mother that she should spare 
Lilian to him, until she should be claimed by a husband, 
and the mother, who dearly loved this wayward son — ' 
her poet as she had called him in the fond exaggeration 
of maternal love, intoxicated by his juvenile success in 
literature — could refuse him nothing. She would have 
to part with her only daughter in a little time. That 
was inevitable. The light-hearted daughter of the house, 
she whose heaviest task hitherto had been the making of 
a new frock for a smart .garden party, she whose only 
sorrows had been the sorrows of others, was liov; to go 
out into the thick of the fight, and bear her own burdens 
. as wife and mother, and carry on her shoulders and in 
her heart the care of a man’s life, his mistakes and dis- 
appointments, his failures and difficulties, all his frailties 
and feeblenesses, physical and mental. These were to be 
her burden, and these she must carry patiently to the 
end, or else go out into the dismal company of faithless, 

dishonoured wives. The Rector of had been a good 

husband, as husbands go, yet his wife looked at her fair 
young daughter, sitting at the piano under the soft lamp- 
light, accompanying her lover’s song, very much as Abra- 
ham may have looked at Isaac on the eve of the intend- 
ed sacrifice. 

‘ It will not be a parting for you and Lilian/ pursued 
Gerard, intent upon his purpose, ‘ for I shall expect you 
to spend all the best part of the year at Hillersdon House. 
We will do the London season together. Drink the cuj) 
of pleasure to the dregs.’ 

"My dearest boy, what do I know of the season. I 
should be out of my element among the people you call 
smart. When Barbara Vere talked of her great parties. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


133 


and her lords and ladies, I felt as if she was talking an 
unknown language. I can get on very well with our 
county people here — we are county, ourselves, you 
know — but I daresay I should hardly feel comfortable 
with them if I met them in London, in all their London 
finery.* 

‘ Dear mother, you underrate the adaptability of your 
plastic sex. I can conceive my father feeling bored by 
town gaieties, and pining for his poultry yard, his country 
papers, and his infallible barometer. He has got into the 
rustic groove, and might suffer by transplantation — but 
you would enjoy the quick, eager existence, and intel- 
lectual friction.* 

" I certainly should delight in meeting intellectual peo- 
ple — Tennyson, Browning, Tyndall, and Owen for in- 
stance,’ said Mrs. Hillersdon, as if a little group of that 
kind were to be met at every evening party in the season. 

‘ And the music and the pictures,’ suggested Gerard. 

‘Yes, indeed, there is so much to see and to hear in 
London. When we have gone up to Limmer s for a fort- 
night the time has been all too short. A Greenwich 
dinner, which I shall always consider a sad waste of time 
and money, an afternoon at Richmond, perhaps a day at 
Ascot, and lunches in London with two hospitable friends. 
The fortnight goes by in a rush, and one seems to have 
seen nothing.* 

‘ It shall be otherwise when you are with me, mother. 
We will go about in a leisurely way, and see everything. 
I know my little London, all that she is, and all that she 
is not, and I will teach you how to get the best she can 
give you. I wonder what you will think of my new 
house.*’ 

‘ I am sure it will be perfect. You have such exquisite 
taste.* 

‘ Fond flatterer. I have nothing but money, which can 
buy the educated taste of other people.* 


134 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 


Gerard spent Christmas at the Rectory, partly because 
his mother was especially anxious that he should be with 
her at that season of family gatherings, and partly be- 
cause his latest letters from builder, architect, and furni- 
ture man promised the completion of the house on the 
last day of the year. There had been a good deal of pre- 
varication in former letters, and there had been various 
excuses for delay — excuses chiefly of a climatic nature, 
the elements seeming to have conspired against the com- 
pletion of that particular house. Frost may have told 
Fog that the house belonged to a new man, and that the 
new man ought to wait. Could he not be content with 
the dog-kennel in which he had lived hitherto, forsooth ? 

But Roger s last letter was speciflc. The builder pledged 
himself that the last of his men should clear out of 
the house on the morning of the 31st. Decorators, carpet- 
layers, needlewomen should vanish from the scene, silently 
as goblins at cockcrow, and on New Year s Eve men and 
women, builders’ minions and upholsterers’ minions, were 
to feast together on a grand supper at the Bell and Horns, 
in the Brompton road. 

Edith Champion had undertaken what she called the 
mounting of the establishment. She had secured an all- 
accomplished housekeeper, and a clever man cook, who 
did not accept the situation until assured of three under- 
lings in the kitchen, and a sitting-room for his exclusive 
use. She had chosen butlers and footmen, and had de- 
vised a livery for the latter — dark, almost invisible green, 
with black velvet collar and facings, black velvet small 
clothes and black silk stockings. ^ It is a sombre livery,’ 
she wrote ; ^ but the powder relieves it, and I think you 
will like the eflfect. Your men will wear silk stockings 
always, that is a point, and I have told your housekeeper 
to be very particular about their shoe-buckles. Their 
shoes will be made in Bond-street, and will cost forty 
shillings a pair. Forgive me for troubling you with these 
details ; but with your wealth your only chance of dis- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 135 


tinction is by nicety in detail. Your house will be simply 
perfect. I went through the reception-rooms yesterday. 
The ceilings are painted in the style of the Ricardi Palace 
— a banquet in Olympus. Cobalt predominates in the 
drapery of the goddesses, who, although Rubenesque, are 
quite unobjectionable. The effect is brilliant, and har- 
monises admirably with the subdued amber and russet of 
the brocade hangings and chair covers. I long for you 
to see your house now all is coming together. I engaged 
your Major Domo yesterday — a chance such as rarely falls 
in the way of a nouveau riche. He was fifteen years 
with Lord Hamperdonne, to whom he was guide, philoso- 
pher, and friend, rather than servant. It was he who 
rescued Hamperdonne from that odious engagement with 
Dolores Drummond, the Spanish dancer. He has a genius 
for organising every kind of entertainment ; and if he 
and your chef can only woik harmoniously your estab- 
lishment will go on velvet. You will see that I am not 
engaging many servants. Parton will be house steward, 
groom of the chambers, and butler, with an under-butler 
and two footmen, a lad for cellar work, and a house mes- 
senger, so that your stablemen may never be called away 
from their work. For a bachelor, I think this personnel, 
with half a dozen women, quite sufficient. Anything 
further would mean display, rather than usefulness, and 
Pm sure you don't desire that.' 

^ How wise she is,' thought Gerard, as he read this let- 
ter for the second time. ‘ How delightful to have to deal 
with an accomplished woman of the world instead of a 
sentimental girl ; and what a wife she will make for a 
man in my position, by and by, when poor Champion's 
time has come. Beautiful, well-born, and full of tact and 
social knowledge. Could any man desire a more delight- 
ful companion ? ' Of her husband, Mrs. Champion wrote 
in a melancholy strain. Mont Oriol had done him very 
little good, if any. He had allowed his work and his 
worries to follow him to the valleys of Auvergne. He 


136 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


had not taken that absolute rest which the doctors had 
so strenuously urged, and he was considerably worse than 
he had been in the summer. The physician who had 
seen him there now talked of ‘ stock exchange spine,’ 
which Edith feared was some kind of mental ailment. 
Her husband was depressed and restless, and there was 
an idea of sending him to St, Leonards for the rest of 
the winter, with a trained attendant, as well as his valet. 

‘ If he goes, I shall go with him,” Mrs. Champion con- 
cluded, with the air of a Roman wife. ‘ I must not allow 
pleasure or inclination to interfere with him. I should 
have infinitely preferred any part of the Riviera — even 
Mentone — to St. Leonards, which I detest ; but it will be 
some advantage to be near you, as I daresaj^ you will be 
too much taken up with your new house to go to the 
South this year. By the way, have you any idea of the 
other house ? A seat in Parliament would give you 
Kudos, and our party wants all the strength it can get.’ 

‘ Pas si bStte,’ thought Gerard ; ‘ I am not going to waste 
any portion of my scanty life in an ill-ventilated, malo- 
dorous, over-crowded bear-garden ! ’ 

He was to go to London on New Years Day, his 
sister accompanying him, and delighted at the idea 
of the journey, and all the more delighted since John 
Cumberland had made it convenient to travel on the 
same day, and by the same train. He preached his 
farewell sermon on St. Stephen’s Day, and drew tears 
from almost every eye in the church by the pathos of his 
affectionate farewell. His congregation knew that the 
pathos was real, and that he had really loved them, and 
worked for them as only love can work. Gerard had been 
glad to spend Christmas at home, for his mother’s sake, 
but despite his affection for both parents, and his tender 
regard for the associations of childhood and early youth, 
the small domestic pleasures, and twaddling recurrences 
to past years, the fuss about the home-grown turkey and 
the home-cured ham — ham cut from a pig of which the 


The World y The Flesh, and The Devil, 137 


rector spoke of as a departed friend — the church decora- 
tions, the parochial festivities, the mothers’ meeting, coal 
and blanket distributions, and exhibition of Christmas 
cards bored him excessively. In the country life goes 
round like a wheel, and nothing but death or calamity 
can change the circle of infinitesimal events. In London 
there is always something new to be done or to be heard 
of — new fashions, new scandals, the unexpected in some 
form or other. 

Gerard was consumed by the feverish impatience of 
the " child who has new robes and may not wear them/ 
That last week at the Kectory seemed illimitable. He 
wanted to be on the strong tide of life — to feel the swift 
river carrying him along — and here he seemed to be sit- 
ting on a vast stretch of level sand, from which he but 
faintly saw the distant flood. Yet this was precisely the 
kind of existence he had been advised to lead — a life of 
placid monotony, passionless, uneventful. 

On his last night at the rectory, and in one of his last 
talks with his mother, she asked him in a casual way if 
he had seen or heard anything more of Hester Daven- 
port. 

‘ No : I have not tried to find her. The attempt seemed 
too hopeless ; and alter all, the face I saw was more a 
dream than a reality ; but yet I know it was Miss Daven- 
port’s face." 

‘ I don’t understand, Gerard ’ 

‘ No, dearest/ interrupted her son, ‘ I must say to you 
as Hamlet said to his fellow-student, Tliere ate more 
things in heaven and earth than you — or I — can quite 
account for. You must come to London, mother. Lon- 
don is full of revelations for anyone who has been buried 
alive for half a lifetime in a rustic rectory. You will 
hear new sciences, new religions. You will find Buddha 
placed shoulder to shoulder with Christ. You will find 
people discrediting the four evangelists and pinning 
their faith upon Home and Eglinton. You will find 
I 


138 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


the cultured classes despising Dickens and making 
light of Thackeray, in favour of the last smart young 
man who has written a smart story of three or four 
pages in a fashionable magazine. The old order is al-. 
ways changing. London is for ever new, for ever young. 
You will feel twenty years younger there than you do 
here.’ 

^ Younger under a smoky sky, Gerard ! Younger in a 
place where one must put on one’s gloves before one can 
venture to pick a flower. Younger among crowds of 
rushing people and over- worked cab-horses, and sickly 
town babies, whose poor little faces make one miserable. 
I shall be glad to be with you, dear ; but I love this 
sleepy old rectory better than the flnest house in Park- 
lane or Grosvenor-square.’ 

Gerard did not try to argue against these benighted 
notions. His own face was set London-wards early next 
morning, and he and Lilian were installed in the new 
house before afternoon tea. They had explored every 
room, and were ready to receive Mr. Cumberland and 
Mrs. Champion at eight o’clock to a friendly New Year 
dinner — a snug parti carr^ at a round table in the break- 
fast-room, one side of which was all window, opening 
into a winter garden, where a fountain played in a low 
marble basin, encircled with palms and camelias. 

The Swan lamps discreetly shaded gave a soft and 
tempered light. The colouring in this room was subdued 
and cool, pale blueish green for the most part, the walls 
the colour of a hedge sparrow’s egg, relieved by the warm 
sepia and Indian red of a few choice etchings. These, 
with a wonderful arrangement of peacock’s feathers and 
celadon Sevres vases over the chimney-piece, with four 
marble busts of the seasons on malachite pedestals in the 
corners of the room, were the only ornaments. 

‘ No quaint corners or angle-nooks, nothing Moorish or 
Japanese in all the house. No copper or brass, or any 
one of the things I adore,’ sighed Mrs. Champion. ‘ Mr. 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 139 


Larose has been horridly tyrannical. Yet I must confess 
he has succeeded. Your house is a creation.’ 

The service was perfection, every man at his best, and 
eager to please, and the little dinner was worthy of a 
company of gourmets, rather than of these four, who 
cared very little what the}^' eat, and who were, some of 
them, too much absorbed in their own thoughts to know 
what they were eating. A lobster souffle, which wouj'^ 
have evoked praises from Lucullus or Lord Alvanley, 
went round without comment or commendation. But if 
Mr. Hillersdon’s friends did not talk about the dinner, 
there was plenty of talk about other things. Edith 
Champion was full of offers to take Lilian to her particu- 
lar friends and her favourite tradespeople during the few 
days she had left before going to St. Leonard’s with hex 
invalid husband. 

' I want you to go to Madame St. Evremonde for your 
gowns,’ said Mrs. Champion. ‘ She is the only woman in 
London who knows where a waist ought to begin and 
end — excuse my taking chiffons, Mr. Cumberland, we 
ought to keep that kind of thing for after dinner — but it 
is such a treat for a battered woman of the world like 
me to have a neophyte to instruct. I should like to take 
you to my shoemaker, too, for he is rather a difficult per- 
son to deal with ; and if he don’t take to you he won’t 
even try to fit your foot.’ 

^ If that is the way of London shoemakers I should buy 
my boots ready-made at the stores,’ said Cumberland, 
grimly. 

‘ Are there ready-made shoes ? ’ Mrs. Champion asked 
innocently. " How terrible. I knew that some people 
buy gloves in shops ready-made ; but ready-made shoes 
must be too dreadful. They can’t fit anybody.’ 

‘ Their particular merit is that they fit everybody,’ said 
Cumberland ; ‘ it is only a question of size.’ 

" Oh, if people don’t care about shape or style, or 
whether they have an 'nstep or not, I suppose a ready- 


140 The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil. 


made boot or shoe would do/ said Mrs. Champion, taking a 
philosophical tone. ‘ They would keep out the wet. Only 
if one is to take a proper pride in one’s clothes one must 
have them from the best makers. I could be content to 
go through life in a tweed gown; but it must be made 
by Redfern or Felix/ 

‘ I’m afraid your dressmaker would be a great deal too 
smart and too expensive for me, Mrs. Champion/ Lilian 
answered quietly. 

‘ Too smart, too expensive. — for Mr. Gerard Hillersdon’s 
sister. Why, you will be expected to dress as well as 
the Princess of Wales. Your toilette will be under the 
fierce light that beats upon a millionaire. You will have 
to dress up to this house.’ 

' I should be sorry to dress in a way that would be out 
of keeping with my position as a country clergyman’s 
daughter.’ 

' And as a London Clergyman’s promised wife/ said 
John Cumberland, stealing a tender look at the fair 
young face from under his strongly marked and some- 
what projecting brows. Those brief looks meant a world 
of love to Lilian. 

" Lot her dress as plainly or as smartly as she pleases, 
Mrs. Champion,’ said Gerald, gaily, ‘ but if Madame St. 
Evremonde is the best dressmaker in London to Madame 
St. Evremonde vshe must go. While you are in this house, 
Lilian, you must look your prettiest for my sake ; but 
when you migrate to Greek-street you may wear a Qua- 
ker’s poke bonnet or a Sister of Charity’s hood.’ 

‘ Greek-street/ exclaimed Mrs. Champion, in her most 
childish manner. ‘ Where is Greek-street ? ’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 141 


CHAPTER IX. 

STILL ONE MUST LEAD SOME LIFE BEYOND.” 

HE dull beginning of the year, before the open- 
ing of Parliament and the gradual awakening 
of London, passed like a dream. The delight 
of installation in the home that he had created 
for himself, and the novel sensation of squan- 
dering money were enough to keep Gerard Hillers- 
don occupied and happy ; while Lilian was divided 
between two absorbing duties, and had her time and her 
mind doubly occupied. On the one side she had her 
brother, whom she dearly loved, and all the pomps and 
vanities of this wicked world ; and on the other side she 
had her future husband, now fully established as Vicar of 
St. Lawrence's, and wanting her counsel and co-operation 
in every undertaking. ‘ I want the parish to be as much 
your parish as mine, Lilian,' he said ; " I want your mind 
and your hand to be in all things, great and small.' 

So on one day Lilian was trudging up and down some 
of the dirtiest alleys in West Central London, deliberat- 
ing and advising as to a night refuge for women and 
children, and on the next she was with her brother at 
Christie's, giving her opinion about a Reynolds or a 
Raflaelle. 

Gerard was profuse in his offers of money, would, in- 
deed, from his .own purse have supplied all the needs of 
St. Lawrence's; but Jack Cumberland exercised a re- 
straining influence, and would only accept moderate bene- 
factions — a hundred pounds for the new Refuge, a hun- 
dred for the Working Man's Institute, and fifty each for 
the Magdalen Rescue Society and Dispensary, two hun- 
dred for the schools ; five hundred pounds in aU. 



142 The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


^ It seems absurd that you should want money for any- 
thing while I have ever so much more than 1 want/ re- 
monstrated Gerard, toying with his open cheque book. 

‘ You shall do something more for us a year or two 
hence, when you have familiarized yourself with your 
fortune, and have acquired a sense of proportion. At 
present you are like a child with a new box of toys, who 
thinks that he can distribute them among his playfellows 
and yet have; the boxful for himself. When you better 
know what money means you shall be our benefactor on 
a larger scale — always supposing you are still in the hu- 
mour. In the meantime that five hundred pounds is a 
prodigious God-send, and will send us along capitally. 
1 never hoped for such an excellent start.’ 

‘ I believe the fellow wants to keep his parish poor,’ 
Gerard said afterwards, in a confidential talk with his 
sister. 

‘ He doesn’t want to sponge upon your fortune, Gerard, 
and he is afraid of pauperising his people by doing too 
much.’ 

‘ Pauperising ? 'Ah, that’s always the cry nowadays ; 
but it would take as long a head as Henry Brougham’s 
to find out where help ends and pauperisation begins. If 
the State were to feed the board school children, yea, even 
with one substantial meal per diem, we are told that we 
should be teaching the parents to look to State aid, and 
to squander their wages on drink. I daresay it might 
work that way in a good many cases ; but if, on the 
other hand, we could succeed in rearing a strong and 
healthy population the craving for drink might be less- 
ened in the next generation.’ 

Hillersdon House was a success. Society flocked to the 
millionaire as flies go to the honey-pot. The Northern 
farmer’s advice to his son is one of the chief points in 
social ethics. We all like to go where money is. There 
is a fascination in wealth and the luxury it can buy that 
only a Socrates can resist, and even Socrates went to rich 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 143 


i men’s houses, though he did not dress for dinner. So- 
i ciety, which had always approved of Gerard Hillersdon, 
was on tiptoe to know what he would do with his 
money ; that portion which envied him his wealth opin- 
ing that he would run through it in a year or two, while 
every body had his own theory as to what he ought to do 
, with it. 

i As a social adviser there could be no one better than 
I Roger Larose, architect, poet, painter and man of fashion; 
a man who seemed to have founded his style and manners 
upon the long-forgotten bucks of those golden days 
before the Regency, when George, Prince of Wales, was 
young. 

‘ I call Roger Larose the Sleeping Beauty,’ said Reuben 
Gambier, ‘for he looks as if he had fallen asleep in some 
corner of the Cocoa Tree Club, at the close of the eight- 
eenth century, in a bag-wig, .a puce coat, “and a frilled 
shirt, and as if be had never become reconciled to modern 
costume.’ 

Larose was an amiable enthusiast, full of pleasant 
whimsicalities, and Gerard, who was naturally indolent, 
allowed him full scope as a counsellor. 

‘You must give parties,’ said Larose; ‘it is useless 
having a fine house if you bury yourself alive in it ! Y^ou 
had better have built yourself a mausoleum — not half a 
bad idea, by the by. If any dear old gentleman ever 
leaves me a few millions, I will build myself a pyramid, 
like Cheops, and live in it till I am ready for the em- 
balmers — a pyramid in which I will receive only a few 
chosen friends, in which I will give choice little dinners. 
We will sprawl on sofas and eat — very uncomfortable, 
I should think. I can imagine nothing but asparagus 
or macaroni as a possible diet, if one must eat sup- 
ported on one’s elbow. The Greeks were dreadfully be- 
hind hand, after all. The Malagese know better, for 
they allow the privilege of sitting on chairs only to 
their chiefs. Yes, my dear Gerard, you must give 


144 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


parties — breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, musical evenings, 
It is written in the stars that you are to provide a good 
deal of the amusement of this ensuing season. I hope you 
like the notion of being a social centre. Miss Hillersdon ? ’ 
said Roger, turning to Lilian, with an insinuating smile. 
Not a handsome man, by any means, this Larose, but with 
a delicate pallor, attenuated feature, and a languid smile, 
which women pronounce ‘interesting.’ 

‘ It is rather alarming, but I want Gerard to be happy 
and amused,’ Lilian replied, brightly; ‘and Mr. Cumber- 
land will help us to receive people. He was immensely 
popular in Devonshire.’ 

‘ My dear young lady, Devonshire isn’t London — but, 
of course, Mr. Cumberland is charming, and I hear people 
are going to ^St. Lawrence’s to hear his sermons.’ 

‘ People ! ’ exclaimed Lilian ; ‘ why the church is cram- 
med every Stinday at all the services.’ 

‘ Ah ; but I mean people — people like Lord Words- 
worth, and Mr. Lemaitre, the actor; people like Lady 
Hyacinth Pulteney — people who criticise and talk. If 
that goes on, Mr. Cumberland will be an acquisition at 
your parties. But, my dear Gerard,’ pursued Roger 
solemnly, ‘ the great point is food. People will go to you 
to be fed — feed them. You will have a luxury of flowers, 
of course ; Mrs. Smith — the Mrs. Smith — will decorate 
your rooms and dinner table. People expect the lust of 
the eye to be gratified ; but that is, after all, a minor 
point. Your iced asparagus, ortolans, quails, plovers’ eggs 
— those are the essentials.’ 

‘ And as a reward for my hospitality, my house will be 
called the Restaurant Hillersdon, or Caf4 Gerard. People 
will eat, drink, and be merry — all at my expense.’ 

‘No, my dear fellow. You will not be laughed at. 
You have not made your money out of Russian hides, or 
American manures. You do not come to us with inade- 
quate aspirates fresh from the Australian backwoods. 
You are not laboriously conning the alphabet of civilised 


The Wortdy The Plesh, and The D^vit, 14 d 


life. You are one of us. You have graduated in all our 
follies and vices. You are an adept in all our conven- 
tionalities — our mispronunciations, affectations, and jargon 
of all kinds. You will do. You are not a new man, only 
that nice boy, Gerard Hillersdon, plus two millions.' 

Hillersdon, perhaps, hardly needed this assurance. He 
might affect the misanthrope, and preach as bitterly as 
Timon in his cave. He loved his fellow-men just well 
enough to enjoy feeding them, and feel that splendour 
would be a poor thing if there were nobody to admire it. 
Again, the science of entertaining was in itself full of 
interest. Every man who has mixed ever so little in 
society believes that he can give a dinner — assort his 
guests and revise a menu — better than anyone else. Hil- 
lersdon was not without that delusion, and society fostered 
it by praise and appreciation. His luncheons, which were 
more frequent at Hillersdon House than any other form 
of entertainment, were voted perfect — perfect as to the 
choice of guests, the harmonious blending of divers opin- 
ions, professions, crazes, perfect as to all material elements 
— the menu never too elaborate or too long — the choicest 
luxuries given with an air of delicate simplicity, which 
disguised their costliness. The popularity of his luncheons 
encouraged Mr. Hillersdon to revive a somewhat exploded 
form of hospitality. He began a series ol Sunday break- 
fasts, Sunday, to which only those were bidden whose 
wider and less orthodox views made the morning service 
of the Anglican Church a purely optional matter — to go 
or not to go, as the trained choir or the sensational preach- 
er might invite : — unholy breakfasts, at which the lit- 
erary agnostic or the disciple ot the latest fad aired his 
or her opinions; breakfasts, the very thought of which 
made Lilian shudder, as she passed the dining-room door 
on her way to the Victoria, which was to carry her to that 
little heaven below, where Jack Cumberland's choir of 
working-men, trained by himself, were to sing, and where 
Jack was to preach one of his heart-stirring sermons. She 


14G The World, The Flesh, and The FtviL 


heard the voices and laughter of her brother’s friends as 
she passed the breakfast -room door, and her heart sank 
within her at the thought of what small significance Sun- 
day now had in the life of that brother. She loved him, 
and she began to fear that he had cast in his lot among 
the unbelievers, among men who ridicule the idea of a 
Personal God, who can discover nowhere in this universe 
the necessity for any higher form of being than their own, 
who think that through illimitable cycles of years creation 
has been climbing upwards to its ultimate apex Man. 

‘Gerard, dear, is Sunday after Sunday to go by with- 
out your crossing the threshold of a church ?’ Lilian said, 
one sunny April morning, when she found her brother 
smoking a cigarette in the winter garden, and looking 
idly at the Marechal Niel roses, while the servants were 
putting their finishing touches to a breakfast- table laid 
for eight. 

‘My darling, I shouldn’t be any the better for church, 
or the church wouldn’t be any the better for me. I am 
a little out of harmony with the Christian idea, just now. 
Either I have outgrown it, or I am passing through a 
phase of doubt; but if you really want me to sacrifice to 
the respectabilities I will go to St, Lawrence with you 
next Sunday. One of Jack’s rousing sermons will do me 
good. They are capital tonics for a relaxed brain ! ’ 

‘Yea’rs ago you used to go to church every Sunday, 
and sometimes twice on a Sunday.’ 

‘ Years ago I was very young, Lillian. I went to church 
for various reasons — first to please my mother — and 
next because the Rector would have made unpleasant re- 
marks at luncheon if he had missed me from the family 
pew, next again, because I liked the sleepy old church and 
the sleepy service, and the familiar faces, and my father’s 
short, sensible sermon, and last of all because I had not 
begun to think of how much or how little faith in spiritual 
things there was in me.’ 

‘ And all that the cleverest people in London can teach 
you is not to believe,’ said Lilian, sadly. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 147 


: ^ My dear girl, the clever people have very little to do 
with iny disbelief. The change is in myself. It came 
about as spontaneously and mysteriously as cotton blight 
on an apple tree. One day you see the tree flourishing, 
the leaves clean and full of sap; and the next day they 
are all curled up and withered, as if a fire had passed over 
them, and the fruit is eaten by worms.’ 

‘ The carriage is at the door, ma’am,’ announced one of 
those perfectly matched footmen whom Mrs. Champion 
had selected, magnificent, impassable beings, who looked 
and moved and spoke as if they had been cradled in lux- 
ury and reared amidst patrician surroundings. 

Lilian drove away in the sunshine, heavy at heart for 
the brother she so fondly loved. She saw him with the 
illimitable power of wealth, surrounded by all the snares 
and temptations of a world in which whim and pleasure 
are the only laws that govern mankind, saw him cut 
adrift from the anchor in which she believed, sailing 
away from the safe harbour of the Christian faith, to the 
bleak and barren sea of a scornful and sullen materialism, 
a gloomy agnosticism which looks with contempt upon 
every spiritual aspiration, and laughs at every Heaven- 
ward instinct as the dream of children and fools. 

While Lilian drove along Piccadilly, to the sound of 
various church bells, and past a population setting church- 
ward Mr. Hillersdon’s Sunday visitors were dropping 
in to the eleven o’clock breakfast — a meal which had but 
one drawback, according to Roger Larose. It made lun- 
cheon an impossibility. 

One of the guests of the day, Mr. Reuben Gambier, 
was a youthful novelist, who had made all vice his prov- 
ince, and whose delight was to shock the susceptibilities 
of the circulating library. His books were naturally 
popular, and as with a restive horse, people were im- 
pressed more by the idea of what he might do than of 
what he had actually done. He was lively and eccentric, 
and a favourite with Hillersdon and his circle, 


148 llie World, Tlie Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘ IVe brought a particular friend of mine, who tells me 
he knows you well enough to come without an invitation,* 
said Gambier, entering the winter garden unannounced, 
from the adjoining drawing room into which he had been 
duly ushered. A low unctious laugh sounded from the 
other side of the half-raised portiere as he spoke, a laugh 
which Gerard instantly recognized. 

‘ Your friend is Mr. Jermyn,’ he said quickly. 

‘ Yes — how did you guess ? * 

^ I heard him laugh ; there is nobody else on earth who 
laughs like that.* 

‘ But you think there is someone down there who does,* 
said Gambier, pointing significantly to the ground. ‘ A 
strange laugh, ain’t it ? but very cheery — sounds as if all 
mankind were a stupendous joke, and as if Jermyn were 
in the secret of all the springs that work this little world, 
and knew when it was going to burst up. I believe he 
knows more about it all than Sir Henry Thomson, or any 
of those scientific swells who tell us what the sun is made 
of, and how long they can warrant the earth to last.* 

Jermyn’s head appeared under the old brocade curtain 
— a curtain made from the vestments of Italian priests, 
the rich spoil of a mediaeval sacristy — a curious face seen 
against the background of purple and gold, clear cut, bril- 
liant in colouring, high, narrow brow, receding curiously, 
sharp nose, light gray eyes, and smiling mouth, displaying 
small white teeth. 

He paused for a moment or two, with the curtain in his 
hand, looking out of the purple and gold, then with a little 
gush of laughter, came across the marble floor and shook 
hands with his host. 

' Surprised to see me, ain’t you, Hillersdon ? * 

‘ No; I have only been surprised not to see you all this 
time. And now answer me a question. Where the devil 
are those rooms of yours where you gave me a supper on 
the night after Lady Fridoline’s party ?* 

^ What ! have you been hunting me up there ? * 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 149 


‘Hunting! Yes, it was a decided case of hunting. I 
don t think the shrewdest detective in London could find 
those rooms of yours/ 

‘I daresay not, unless he knew where to look for them. 
I never tell anybody my address, but I sometimes take a 
friend home to supper — a man who is too full of himself 
and his own affairs to observe the way by which he 
goes/ 

Another visitor came into the winter garden, and then 
Hillersdon w^ntinto the next room to receive the rest of 
the party, which was soon complete. 

The ninth convive proved a success. Most people wer 
interested in the Fate-reader, although most people pre- 
tended to make very light of his art. That searching 
gaze of his, looking into a man’s soul through his face 
had an uncanny inffuence that fascinated as much as it 
repelled. He had made such strange hits by those fate- 
reading prophecies of his, had foretold changes and events 
in the lives of men, of which those men had themselves 
no foreshadowing. What was this power which enabled 
him thus to prognosticate ? He called it insight; but the 
word though both vague and comprehensive, was nob 
strong enough to explain a gift hitherto the peculiar prop- 
erty of the necromancer and the charlatan — never before 
exercised airily, and gratuitously by a man who was re- 
ceived in society. Whatever Mr. Jermyn’s means might 
be, whether large or small, he bad never been known to 
make money by the exercise of his occult power. 

He was leaving with the rest of Hillersdon s friends 
before one o’clock when his host detained him. 

‘ I want to have a quiet talk with you/ said Gerard, 
‘We have not met since my altered fortunes.’ 

‘ True,’ answered Jermyn, lightly, ‘ but I prophesied 
the turn in your luck, did I not, old fellow ? ’ 

‘ You hinted at possibilities — you set me on the track 
of an old memory — that scene in the railway station at 
Nice/ 


150 The World y The Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘ Lucky dog. Half the young men in London are green 
with envy when they talk about you. An instant’s peril 
— and a lifetime of boundless w^ealth.’ 

‘ There is no such thing as boundless wealth except in 
America/ said Gerard. ‘It is a phrase to be used only 
about a man who owns a silver mine whose limits no man 
has ever discovered. My income is fixed, and — ’ 

‘ Limited,’ cried Jermyn, interrupting ; ‘ a decidedly 
limited income. Is it eighty or ninety thousand a year, 
or does it run to a hundred ? I believe were I in your 
shoes I should be thinking of economising. *1 should have 
a holy horror of the workhouse. One loses all sense of 
proportion under the weight of two millions.’ 

‘ There is a good deal of spending in it, certainly, if a 
man knows how to spend judiciously. Do you like my 
house ? ’ 

‘ I consider it perfect. You have had the discretion 
not to follow the prevailing fashion of the day. That is 
your strong point. You have not gone too far, either, in 
expense or splendour. You have put on the brake at the 
right moment.’ 

‘ Come and see my den/ said Gerard. 

He led the way to the upper fioor, opened a door at 
the back of the house, and ushered Jermyn into a room 
v/ith folding doors, opening into a second. The two rooms 
exactly reproduced those Inn chambers where he had 
seen the vision of Hester Davenport. Colour, form, mater- 
ial — all had been carefully copied, Gerard’s memory of 
that night and its surroundings being more vivid than 
any other memory of his past life. There were the same 
curtains of sombre velvet, darkest green in the lights and 
black in the shadows, the same Oriental carpet, of rich, 
but chastened, hues, the same, or almost the same, Italian 
pictures — a Judas by Titian — a wood nymph by Guido, 
the same delicately carved Chippendale cabinets, with 
their fragile cornices and daint}^ open work. 

‘ My very rooms ! by all that’s wonderful ! ’ cried Jer- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 151 


myn. What a close observer of still life you must be. 
You have got everything — except me/ 

‘ The black marble bust ? Yes that is wanting ; but I 
mean to have that before I have done/ 

"Well, my dear Hillersdon, imitation is the sincerest 
flattery, and I feel intensely flattered/ 

"A whim — a fancy that pleased me fora moment — that 
is all it means. Those after midnight hours in your 
chambers marked the turning point in my life. I had 
made up my mind to shoot myself that very night. The 
pistol was ready loaded in my pistol-case. I had thought 
it all out, and had made up my mind. God knows how 
you guessed my secret so readily.’ 

" My dear fellow, your mind was steeped in suicide. 
There was no secret in the matter — to an observer with 
the slightest claim to insight. I saw despair, defiance, 
recklesness, and the gloom which means only one thing — 
self-destruction.’ 

" And while I was at the opera listening to the doom of 
Don Juan, the everlasting type of spendthrift and profli- 
gate — while I was sitting in your chambers, the lawyer’s 
letter was lying on my table, within a few feet of the 
pistol-case — the letter that heralded the announcement of 
millions. That night was like a bad dream — and it was 
not until many days afterwards that I was able to shake 
off that dream feeling, and realize my good luck,’ 

" Good luck with a vengeance,’ laughed Jermyn. " You 
have been lucky in more ways than one — lucky in love 
as well as in gold ; lucky in the fast coming release of the 
woman you love.’ 

" I don’t quite follow you,’ Gerard said coldly, resenting 
this allusion even from a man who professed to know 
everybody’s business. 

" Oh, come now you can’t be angry with me for touch- 
ing upon an open secret. Everybody knows of your de- 
votion to one bright particular star ; and everybody will 
be inclined to congratulate you when the worthy stock- 


152 


The World, The Flesh, and The Levit, 


broker gets his order of release. Life can be of very 
little value to him, poor fellow. I saw him dragged about 
in a bath-chair on the parade at St. Leonards a month 
ago, a dismal wreck, and now I am told he is in retreat 
at Finchley — the beginning of the end.’ 

Gerard smoked his cigarette in silence. The conversa- 
tion was evidently displeasing him. 

The beginning of the end ? Yes, it might be that the 
end was near; and if it were so, what better could he 
desire than to marry the woman he had so ardently de- 
sired to marry just four years ago ; the capable, accom- 
plished woman whom all the town admired, and who was 
rich enough to be in no wise influenced by his wealth. 
She was not less beautiful than she had been in her girl- 
hood — more beautiful, rather, with a beauty which was 
only now ripening in its perfect development — a rudJier 
gold upon her hair, a flner curve of cheek and throat. 
People were never tired of telling him that Mrs. Champion 
was the handsomest woman in London. 

‘ I want to ask you another question,’ Gerard began, 
when he had smoked out the cigarette. ‘ Was I utterly 
mad that night in your rooms, or did I see a vision of a 
girl at a sewing machine ? ’ 

‘ You were not mad by any means. Your conversation 
was both rational and logical. It is quite possible that 
you saw a vision.’ 

‘ Produced by some trickery of yours, no doubt. How 
was it done ? ’ 

‘ If I were master of any of the black arts, do you think 
I would tell you the secrets of my trade ? As for the 
vision, suppose I willed that you should recall the love- 
liest face you had ever seen, would that account for the 
phenomenon, do you think ?’ 

‘ I don’t know ; the face was certainly one I had seen 
before ; but I was quite unable to identify it without as- 
sistance, therefore one would suppose it had faded out of 
my mind, and could hardly bo willed into vivid actuality 
by you/ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 153 


' You make no allowance for the submerged identity — 
that inner ego beneath the ego of every day existence — 
that hidden nature which keeps its own fancies and 
thoughts locked in darkness, perhaps for years, to start 
into light at a touch of a kindred spirit — that mysterious 
being dormant in us from the dawn of our manhood which 
only awakens at the call of love, and which is at the root 
of that other mystery we call love at first sight — love, 
passionate, all-absorbing, strong as death, born in an hour/ 

‘If not an Adam at his birth he is no love at all,’ 
quoted Gerard. 

And then he remembered how in the beaten track of 
life his love of Edith Champion had grown up; how he 
had met her at drives, and tennis parties, and cricket 
matches, and afternoon teas, and had danced with her 
three nights a week, and heard her praised by men and 
women ; until gradually, out of these commonplace ele- 
ments he had come to think her the first necessity of his 
existence, and to follow her, and devote himself to her. 
No, there had been nothing romantic there — no subtle 
mysterious flame, wrapping him round in an instant, sud- 
den, invincible, destroying. He loved as men and women 
love in what is called good society — reasonably, with a 
love that does not burst bonds, or even violate conven- 
tionalities. 

He thought a good deal about Edith Champion during 
that April afternoon, long after Jermyn had left him, and 
when he was sauntering and dreaming alone in his little 
grove of lime and chestnut, where the leaf buds and 
newly-opening leaves were faintly fanned by a soft west 
wind, and where, above the interwoven branches, the sky 
showed deeply blue — one of those peerless spring after- 
noons which bring with them, in their own fresh youth- 
fulness, a sense of reviving youth in the frame and mind 
of man — factitious, but delightful while it lasts. 

He thought of the woman to whom he had bound him- 
self, and for perhaps the first time since he had given her 
J 


154 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


that solemn promise of fidelity he felt the shadow of doubt 
creeping across that sunlit path which an indulgent Fate, 
granting him all things to be desired of man, had marked 
out for him. He told himself that he was one of the spoilt 
children of nursery story books, he was inclined to quar- 
rel with his toys. 

He had been living amongst men whose master is the 
spirit that always denies. He had steeped himself in that 
pessimism of small minds which pervades society, and 
which is the cliosen gospel of the men who profess to be 
in advance of their fellow-men. A dull,* dead hopeless- 
ness came down upon him, like a dark cloud, in the midst 
of this palace of art which he had built for his soul, and 
the palace seemed no better than a prison-house. 

He and Mrs. Champion had met less frequently during 
the last month, for Edith, who was warm-hearted and 
kindly natured, despite her essentially modern ideas of 
life, had deemed it her duty to withdraw in some mea- 
sure from society, now that her husband was the inmate 
of a private lunatic asylum. She drove to Finchley three 
times a week, and spent an hour or two with her hus- 
band, sometimes driving with him in the doctor’s capa- 
cious landau, while her own horses rested, sometimes 
walking beside his wheel chair in the garden, and listen- 
ing patiently while he rambled in hopeless confusion of 
spirit through the Stock Exchange list, from Berthas and 
Buenos Ayres First Preference to Electric Lighting Com- 
panies and Papafuego Loans; the shattered mind retrac- 
ing trodden paths, and finding pleasure in familiar sounds, 
memory almost a blank. Mr. Champion was placable, 
satisfied with his surroundings, and expressing no im- 
patience of restraint, or desire to be taken back to his 
own house — indeed it seemed to his wife that he had for- 
gotten every detail of his past existence, except the shib- 
boleth of the Stock Exchange. 

In this dismal state it would have been less than cha- 
rity to pray for the prolongation of his life. Edith did all 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


155 


in her power, by frequent supervision and by undeviating 
interest, to secure the patient’s well-being; He had his 
own old and trusted servant with him, as a check upon 
the service of the doctor’s attendants, A wife who had 
loved him passionately could have done no more than 
Edith was doing. 


CHAPTER X. 

‘"EARTH BEING SO GOOD WOULD HEAVEN SEEM BEST ?” 

l^mERHAPS in every life there is one perfect inter- 
ravJ/ lude — one long sweet interval set somewhere 
in the midst of the natural cares and tribu- 
lations of common-place existence, a period in 
which trouble and sorrow are unknown, ^d 
all the colours of earth and sky are deepened into 
supernatural beauty. The period of a young girls 
engagement to the man of her choice — if she be 
only single minded and free from jealous fears — is one 
of these halcyon days — a time of peace and happiness, 
the winds and waves of trouble all lying at rest, while 
those wild sea-birds joy and hope are hatching. Lilian 
Hillersdon was steeped in the sunlight and the music of 
that enchanting time. The man to whom she had plighted 
her life seemed to realise her highest ideal of manly ex- 
cellence. He satisfied every need of her nature. 

She was deeply religious, and she found in him a faith 
that could apprehend and discuss every theory and doubt 
of the age, and yet stand strong as a tower. She was 
tender-hearted, benevolent, sympathetic, taking the suf- 
ferings of humanity as a portion of her own life, an ever 
present sorrow in the midst of her own joy, and she found 
in John Cumberland a pity as tender as her own, and a 


156 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


benevolence of a far wider grasp. She could look up to 
him with meek reverence, as the women of old looked up 
to their mailed warriors, the men who went out to the 
unknown land to fight for the sepulchre of their Lord. 
She could revere him, and yet be utterly happy and 
light-hearted in his companionship, for his religion was, 
like Kingsley’s, the gospel of cheerfulness, and his most 
ardent desire was to get the greatest sum of happiness 
out of this world for himself and others. 

The one shadow on her life was the fact that her 
brother had wantonly shut himself outside that fold 
where she would have gathered him, with all the precious 
things of her life; but when she told Jack Cumberland 
her fears and regrets,, he smiled them away with his 
broad indulgent view of a young man’s foolishness. 

‘ He is only going through that phase of unbelief which 
most men have to suffer at some period of their lives,’ he 
sai^. ‘He will not be prayed or preached into happier 
views, be sure dearest. The best thing you and I can do 
is to leave him alone with his opinions till he finds out 
how barren and joyless this world is while it means the 
whole, and how much more comprehensible when we 
accept it for what it is — a single round upon the ladder 
ol everlasting life. In the meantime, if we can interest 
him in philanthropic schemes, and the making of Chris- 
tian England, we shall do a good deal.’ 

‘ He has promised to make the round of our parish with 
mother next week,’ said Lilian. 

JMrs. Hillersdon’s much-talked of visit to her son’s 
house had been deferred from one cause and another 
until April was nearly over ; but when that pleasant 
month was at its best she appeared upon the scene, fresh 
and smiling as one of the glebe meadows on a sunny 
morning, and, escorted by the Rector, who was to spend 
only three days in town, before returning westward to 
visit old friends, and to preach charity sermons at Stroud 
and at Bath on his way home. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 157 


The mother was full of admiration of her son's sur- 
roundings, and of the pretty suite of rooms allotted to 
Lilian, in whose future home she was even more deeply 
interested. While the Rector was in London, the time 
was devoted to picture galleries, concerts, the park, and 
society, with the exceptiori of a somewhat hurried survey 
of Mr. Cumberland's church, vicarage, and schools ; but 
when Mr. Hillersdon had departed upon his round of 
visits, Lilian took complete possession of her mother, 
and most of their time was spent in the neighbourhood 
of Soho, both mother and daughter preferring the simple 
little luncheon provided by Jack Cumberland's plain cook, 
and middle-aged housemaid, in the sober oak panelled 
dining-room in Greek* street, to the new inventions and 
elaborate delicacies of a luncheon at Hillersdon House. 
The mother wss never tired of inspecting her daughter's, 
future home, or of discussing that important question of 
household linen, with all its scope for quiet refinement 
and homely elegance. Most delightful was it also to join 
Lilian and her lover in their rambles after furniture, 
books, and curios, wherewith to make the new home 
more and more homelike — the long drives to queer old 
brokers’ shops to examine^ some gem of the Chippendale 
or Sheraton period, entangled in a dusty labyrinth of 
rubbish. It was curious how to these two women there 
was more real rapture in a couple of oval-backed chairs 
of the wheat pattern, unearthed at a remote broker's 
than in all the chastened splendour and carefully thought- 
out luxury of Hillersdon House ; indeed, there was to 
Mrs. Hilleisdon's simple mind — chastened by long years 
of tranquil inactivity, sobered by the sorrow's of a country 
parish — some latent feeling of distrust which saddened 
her in the midst of her son's brilliant surroundings. The 
change in his fortunes was too sudden and too intense. 
Unconsciously she echoed the foreboding of Solon when 
Croesus exhibited his magnificence before the calm eyes 
of wisdom. She looked at her son, radiant, animated, 


158 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


leading the conversation at a table where all the guests 
were men of mark, and all the women beauties or wits, 
and the flush upon his cheek seemed the hectic of disease, 
the light in his eye too restless lor health. She questioned 
him with keenest anxiety after one of these brilliant 
dinners. 

‘ Are you not doing too much, Gerard,’ she asked ten- 
derly, ‘ burning the candle of life at both ends ? ’ 

‘ My dear mother, candles were made to burn. If one 
must be either a flame or a lump of tallow I would rather 
be the flame — though, no doubt, the unlighted tallow 
would last a great deal longer. I daresay we seem to be 
taking life prestissimo alter your gentle andante move- 
ment in Devonshire. But a man who has no financial 
cares can stand a little racketting. I used to take a great 
deal more out of myself in the days when the thought 
of my tailor’s bill, or the image of my landlord’s sullen 
face scowling at me from the half open door of his back 
l)arlor would come between me and the rose-festooned 
walls of a Belgravian ball-room.’ 

‘ But you have financial cares of another kind, Gerard,’ 
answered his mother, in her grave, sweet voice. ‘ You 
have the disposal of a great fortune — talents for which 
you must account by and by.’ 

‘ At least, admit that I have not buried them in a nap- 
kin — unless it is a dinner napkin,’ laughed Gerard. ‘ What 
did you think of that chaufroid of quails — common-place, 
I fear ; everybody gives quails at this season ; the Lon- 
don menu becomes as monotonous as that of the Israelites 
in the wilderness ; but the lobster souffle was iced to per- 
fection.’ 

‘ Well, I won’t try to talk seriously to you to-night; 
you will only laugh at my old-fashioned ideas. I was 
brought up to think of a fortune as something held in 
trust for one’s fellow-creatures.’ 

‘ You were brought up by the ideal squire and squiress. 
Yes, I remember my grandfather, who spent every six- 


The World y The Flesh, and The Devil, 159 


pence he could spare from the mere bread and cheese of 
this life, upon building cottages for his farm labourers 
and improving the drainage of old-fashioned homesteads, 
and who was considered a tyrannical landlord by way of 
recompense — and my grandmother, who tramped up and 
down muddy lanes and penetrated foul-smelling cabins, 
and dressed sore legs, and read to the sick and the blind, 
and was generally spoken of as an officious domineering 
person. Is that the kind of life you want me^ to lead, 
mother? ’ 

'No, dear; that was charity upon a small scale, and 
under difficulties, You can do some great work.’ 

'Only show me what there is for me to do, mother, and 
I will do it. There is Jack Cumberland yonder, who 
knows that my surplus income is at his service, but who 
is too proud to be helped, except in the most insignificant 
way. Shall I build him a church, or shall I endow an 
almshouse vast enough to hold all the poor old men and 
women in his parish ? I am ready to give anything, or 
to do anj^thing. If I had any treasure specially dear to 
my heart, I would surrender it, as Poly crates threw his 
ring into the sea.’ 

‘Ah, dearest, I know your heart is in the right place,’ 
said the mother, drawing nearer to the low chair in which 
her son was reclining, his head l^dng back upon the russet 
and amber cushions, his cheek pale with the exhaustion 
of an animated evening, ‘ but I am grieved to think that 
in a life which might be so happy — and so useful — there 
is one sad want.’ 

‘ What is that, mother ? ’ 

‘ The want of religious convictions. Your sister tells 
me that you never go to church now, that Christ is no 
longer your master and your guide, but that you and your 
friends talk of the Kedeemer of mankind as a village 
philosopher in advance of his age, who unconsciously re- 
produced the aspirations of Plato, and the ethics of Bud dha. 
You used to be such a firm believer, Gerard, in the days 


ICO 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


when you came home from Eton, so fresh, and frank, and 
joyous ; and when you and I used to ha;Ve such long talks, 
together in the woods between luncheon and the evening 
service/ 

‘Ah, mother, those were the days when life was a pic- 
ture and not a problem ; the days before I began to think. 
I daresay I shall be just as good a believer again by and 
by, when I am old enough to leave off thinking.' 


CHAPTEK XL 

FOR SUCH THINGS MUST BEGIN SOMEDAY." 

R. CUMBERLAND'S most energetic coadjutor 
in the improvement of his new parish was 
Lady Jane Twyford, who had worked in that 
parish for many years, and who was the head 
_ and front of a club and home for working 

women, that stood almost within the shadow of 
the old church of St. Lawrence. Lady Jane had 
seen vicars and curates come and go. She had seen good 
and faithful shepherds ; she had seen those who scarce 
knew how to hold a sheep hook; and she was quick 
to recognise the right stamp of man in the new incum- 
bent. She entered heartily into all his projected 
improvements, and gave the hand of friendship to his 
intended wife; while the Vicar on his side ardently 
espoused all the enthusiasms of the lady, and lent his 
musical gifts to those social evenings at the club which 
it was Lady Jane's delight to inaugurate and superintend. 
To have as head of the parish a man with a strong brain 
and a fine baritone voice, supported by an extensive 



The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. IGl 


repertoire from both oratorio and opera, was more than 
she had ever hoped, and she gave the new Vicar her 
friendship and her counsel in unstinted measure. She 
was a familiar visitor in the dreariest ground-door dens, 
and in the most miserable garrets within the district, 
and she could tell him a great deal about his neediest 
parishioneis, who, although they frequently shifted from 
one wretched lodging to another, did not often wander 
far adeld, indeed for the most part revolved within a 
narrow circle, keeping the old burial-ground of St. Law- 
rence as their centre, and the church tower as their land 
mark, a land mark which sometimes served to guide the 
feet of the Saturday-night-reveller, too far gone in liquor 
to read the names of the streets, or recognise minor 
indications. 

To please his sister and her finance Gerard Hillersdon 
interested himself in Lady Jane’s club, and excused him- 
self from an engagement at one of the most distinguished 
houses in London, where hospitality was a fine art, and 
where Cabinet Ministers were as common as strawberries 
in July, in order to eat boiled salmon and roast lamb in 
Jack Cumberland’s dining-room, v/here Lady Jane and 
his sister made up the party of four. His mother had 
gone back to Devonshire, satiated with the sights of 
London, and loaded with gifts from her millionaire son, 
elegances and inventions for drawing-room and morning- 
room, unknown and undreamed of by the shopkeepers of 
Exeter. 

He was not sorry to give up a ducal dinner-party, 
albeit his card of invitation bristled with Royalties. He 
had been tolerably familiar with all that London can 
offer in the way of pleasure and dissipation before he 
came into his fortune. He stood now upon a higher 
grade of the steps that approached the shrine, but the 
palace was the same palace, the lights, music, flowers, 
lovely women were the same that he had looked upon 
for half a dozen seasons, when he was a nobody. He 


162 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


would have liked to have had a new world — to have had 
a gate open for him into a land where all things were 
new. It he had been able to walk more than half a dozen 
miles without feeling tired he would have started for 
Central Africa. He had serious thoughts of Japan, Cey- 
lon, or even Burmah — but while an inner self yearned for 
untrodden lands, the common-place, work-a-day self 
clung to Mayfair and its civilisation — to the great city in 
which for the man with any pretension to be ^ smart’ 
there is only one hatter, one boot-maker, tailor, carriage- 
builder, one kind of letter-paper, one club, and one per- 
fume possible; for be it observed that although the really 
smart man may be a member of twenty clubs there is 
only one that he considers worthy of him, that one from 
which the black ball has excluded the majority of his 
particular friends. 

This little dinner in Soho, served by the neat parlour 
maid, in the sombre oak-panelled parlour, this talk with 
Lady Jane of the ways and works of girls who made jam 
and girls who made tailors’ trimmings, was almost as 
good as a glimpse of a new country. All things here 
were new to the man who since he left the University 
had lived only amongst people who were or pretended to 
be of the mode, modish. 

The stories he heard to-night of sin and sorrow, good 
and bad, brutal crime, heroic effort, tender self-sacrifice, 
in a world given over to abject poverty, with all the lights 
and shadows of these lowly lives, touched and interested 
him more than he could have supposed possible. His heart 
and his fancy had not been brought so near the lives of 
the masses since he read, with choking throat and tear- 
dimmed eyes, Zola’s story of the lower deeps in that bril- 
liant Paris of which he, Gerard Hillersdon, knew only the 
outward glitter and garish colouring. Behind the boule- 
vards and the caf^s, the theatres and the music halls, 
there is always this other world where everybody whose 
eyes open on the light of God’s day is foredoomed a ‘ lifer/ 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


163 


sentenced to hard labour, and with but faintest hope of a 
ticket-of-leave after years of patient work. To Gerard, 
conscious of wealth in superabundance, these stories of 
sordid miseries, agonies which a five pound note might 
cure, or fatal diseases, incurable for ever, which a little 
ease and a little comfoi’t might have averted, seemed 
doubly dreadful — dreadful as a reproach to every rich 
man in the city of London. And yet to try and alter 
these things, he told himself, would be like trying to turn 
the tide of the St. Lawrence, above the falls of Niagara. 
Were he to cast all his fortune into this great gulf of 
poverty there would be one millionaire the less, and for 
the masses an almost imperceptible gain. But he resolved, 
sitting in this sombre parlour, with the sunset of a fine 
May evening glowing on the polished oak panels, as on 
deep water — he resolved that these stories of hard lives 
should not have been told him in vain — that he would do 
some great thing, when once he could decide upon the 
thing that was most needed to lessen the measure of per- 
petual want. Whether lodging house or hospital, club or 
refuge, reformatory or orphanage, something would he 
do; something which should soothe his own conscience 
and satisfy his mother’s piety. 

The dinner was all over before eight o’clock, and the 
little party left the Vicarage on foot to go to a hall in the 
neighbourhood which had been lent for a meeting of the 
choirs formed by the various women’s clubs in London. 
The concert and competition had begun when the Vicar’s 
party entered the lighted hall, and the building was 
crowded in every part, but seats had been kept for Mr. 
Cumberland and his friends in a central position in front 
of the platform. 

The choirs were ranged in a semi-circle, like the spec- 
tators in a Greek theatre. There were eight choirs, 
numbering in all something over two hundred girls, and 
each choir wore a sash of a particular colour from shoulder 
to waist. These bright scarves across the sombre dresses, 


164 The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


all following the same line, gave an appearance of uni- 
formity to the whole costume. The eye hardly noted the 
dingy browns, or rusty blacks, the well-worn olives, or 
neutral grays of cheap, hard-wearing gowns. The bright, 
smiling faces, the neatly diessed hair — with its varied 
colouring, from raven black, through all the shades of 
brown and ruddy gold, to palest flaxen — the blue, and 
yellow, and green, and rose, and violet sashes filled the 
hall with life and colour. 

Seen thus in a mass of smiling humanity the clubs of 
London seemed tp have sent out a bevy of beauties. The 
general eflTect was excellent; and when all the voices 
burst forth in a great gush of melody, as the united choirs 
attacked Mendelssohn’s ‘ Greeting,’ Gerard felt the sudden 
thrill of sympathy which brings unbidden tears to the 
eyes. 

After that burst of melody, in which all the choirs sang 
together, there came other part songs by separate choirs. 
One of these by the members of a club at Chelsea, which 
called itself somewhat ambitiously the St. Cecilia, struck 
Gerard as a marked advance upon the others. They sang 
Schubert’s ‘Wanderer,’ arranged as a part song, with 
English words, and among the many voices there were 
tones of purest quality which went to Gerard Hillersdon’s 
heart, and moved him more than the new tenors and 
much heralded sopranos from Italy, America, and Aus- 
tralia had been able to do of late. Indeed, there had been 
nights at the opera when he, who was passionately fond 
of music, had begun to fancy that he had left off* caring 
for it; that one may get beyond music as one gets be- 
yond so many other pleasures ; that even to that pure 
and perfect enjoyment there may come a season of satiety. 

To-night those familiar notes thrilled him ; those fresh 
young voices pealing out over the crowded hall awakened 
in him a rapture of humanity, a longing to be one with 
this new world of humble toilers, this world of struggles 
and of cares, in which the pleasures were so simple and 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


1G5 


so few. This was a gala night, no doubt, for all these 
girls. To stand on yonder platform, to wear those bright- 
coloured sashes, and mingle their voices in tuneful har- 
monies, meant for these girls a festival. He thought of 
the girls he met in society, the girls steeped to the lips 
in worldliness and social intrigue; girls who calculated 
the cost of every entertainment, apprised its value, social 
and financial; sneered if the fioral decorations at a ball 
were sparely or badly done; sneered even more con- 
temptuously when Transatlantic or newly-made wealth 
obtruded itself upon the eye in a too lavish magnificence; 
girls who were gourmets upon leaving the nursery, and 
who passed at once from the school -room bread and but- 
ter to a nice discrimination in quails, ortolans, and peri- 
gord pie ; girls who went gaily flirting and dancing 
through the flowery groves of a London June, all fresh- 
ness and infantine candour under the tempered incan- 
descent lamps, yet having one eye always steadily directed 
to the main chance of an eligible husband and a handsome 
establishment. 

While he idly philosophised, gazing somewhat dreamily 
at the wall of faces, rising in a semi-circle in front of 
him, till the topmost rank seemed to touch the roof of 
the hall, his eye suddenly fastened upon one face in the 
middle distance, a delicate and pensive face, far paler 
than the majority of those faces, though pallor is the pre- 
dominant note in the complexions of London work girls. 
That one face, having once been perceived by him, shone 
out from the mass of faces, separate and distinct, and 
held him at gaze. It was the face that had been never 
totally absent from his mind and fancy since that strange 
night in Justin Jermyn s chambers, the face of the girl at 
the sewing machine. Line for line it was the face he 
had seen in a vision, distinct in its identity as the living 
face he was looking at to-night. 

When the singing ceased he questioned Lady Jane, who 
sat next him. 


166 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘ There is a girl in the Chelsea choir, a very lovely girl, 
but with a look of trouble in her face,’ he said. ‘ Do you 
know who she is ? ’ 

‘ I think I know whom you mean. Can you point her 
out to me ? ’ 

He counted the rows and the heads, and indicated the 
exact position of the girl whose face attracted him. 

‘ Do tell me what you know about her,’ he said earn- 
estly. 

‘ Very little. She is not in my parish or in my club. 
I believe she is a good girl. She lives with her father 

‘ Who was once a gentleman and a scholar, but who is 
now nothing but a drunkard,’ interrupted Gerard. 

‘ You know her then ? ’ said Lady Jane. 

‘ Is that her history ? ’ 

‘ I fear it is. She came once to a social evening at our 
club, and I talked to her, but she was very reticent, and 
it is from other girls I have heard the little I know of 
her story. The father was in the church, but disgraced 
himself by intemperate habits. The girl who told me 
this heard it from him, not from his daughter. Hester is 
a brave, good girl, and bears the burden of her father’s 
vices, and works very hard to keep him from destitution. 
She is a very clever hand at braiding upon cloth. You 
may have noticed the braided gowns and jackets that 
have been worn of late years. Hester Dale does that 
kind of work for the fashionable tailors.’ 

‘ Is it hand work or done by the sewing-machine ? ’ 

^ The greater part is machine -work. Hester is very 
expert — a really exquisite worker by hand or machine — 
but it is a hard life at best. I wish we could do more to 
brighten it for her. We could give her many little treats, 
and pleasant excursions in the country if she could only 
forget that she is a gentleman’s daughter, and mix with 
our girls upon an equal footing. She would find a good 
deal of natural refinement among them, lowly as their 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 167 


surroundings are. But she does not care to join in any- 
thing but the singing classes. Music is her only pleasure.’ 

‘ Is not London a place of terrible temptations for so 
lovely a girl, under such adverse circumstances ? ’ asked 
Gerard, in the pause that followed the next part-song, 
by an Eastend choir. 

‘ Oh, Hester is not that kind of girl,’ answered Lady 
Jane, quickly ; ‘ she is too pure-minded to be approached 
by any evil influences.’ 

Another choir burst into Mendlessohnic melody, ^ The 
Maybells and the Flowers,’ a melody gay and fresh as 
May itself — and Gerard was again constrained to silence, 
but he never took his eyes from the pure oval of that 
pale, pensive face, with its lovely violet eyes, full of a 
dreamy sweetness, gentle, trustful, innocent as the eyes 
of a child. Verily, this was a loveliness exempt from the 
snares and lures that lie in wait for vulgar beauty. A 
girl with such a face as that would not be easily tempted. 

His mind went back to those two occasions upon which 
he had met Hester Davenport. He remembered that au- 
tumn afternoon at the Rectory, when he went into the 
drawing-room to bid Lilian good-bye, and found a strange 
young lady sitting with her at the little Japanese table 
in the bow window — a young lady in a plain alpaca gown 
and a neat straw hat, and with the loveliest face he had 
seen for many a long day. He remembered the few words 
interchanged with the Curate’s daughter — the common- 
place inquiries as to how she liked Stuttgart, and Stutt- 
gart’s ways and manners, and whether she had studied 
music or painting — and then a hurried adieu, as he ran off 
to drive to the station. He remembered that other meet- 
ing by the sea, and a somewhat longer conversation — a 
little talk about her favourite walks, and her favourite 
books. He recalled the sweet face in its youthful fresh- 
ness — fair as the face of the holy bride in Raffaelle’s 
‘Spozalizio’ — and then he thought of the girls he had 
known in the smart world, girls who had made magnifi.- 


168 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 


cent marriages on the strength of a beauty less exquisite 
— who were now queens of society, treading upon the 
pathways strewn with the roses of life — worshipped, feted, 
royal in their supremacy. 

And it was just the starting point, the entourage that 
made ail the difference. This girl might sit at her sew- 
ing-machine till her loveliness faded to the pale shadow 
of the beauty that has been. 

He hardly heard the rest of the concert, though the 
voices were tolerably loud. He was in a troubled dream 
of a life, which, after all, concerned him very little. What 
was Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba ? Yet, in his eager- 
ness to find out more about Hester Davenport, he bade 
Lady Jane a hurried good-night in the hall, and put his 
sister into her carriage to be driven home alone, 

‘ I am going for a stroll in the moonlight,’ he said, 
‘ good night, dear. Don’t sit up for me. I may go to my 
club for half an hour afterwards.’ 

It was early yet, not quite ten o’clock, and the young 
May moon was shining over the chimneys of Soho, a 
tempting night for a walk, and Gerard was given to noc- 
turnal perambulations, so Lilian hardly wondered at being 
sent home alone. 

He watched the brougham till it disappeared round a 
corner, and then watched the doors of the hall till the 
audience had all passed out, and melted away into the 
infinite space of London ; and then he watched the girls 
who composed the different choirs as they departed, mostly 
in talkative clusters, full of gaiety after the evening’s 
amusement. Among so many girls, all dressed in much 
the same fashion, it was not an easy task to single out 
one — but his eye was keen to distinguish that one girl 
for whom he waited, as she crossed the street, separating 
herself from the herd, and walked rapidly westward, he 
following. She walked with the quick, resolute pace of 
a woman accustomed to thread her way through the 
streets of a great city, uncaring for the faces that passed 


The World, The Flesh, and The DeviL 


169 


her by, unconscious of observers, intent on her own busi- 
ness, self-contained, and self-reliant. Gerard Hillersdon 
followed on the opposite side of the way, waiting for some 
quieter spot in which he might address her. They walked 
in this fashion as far as St. James’s Park, and there, under 
the shelter of spring foliage, beneath Carlton House ter- 
race, he overtook and accosted her. 

‘ Good evening, Miss Davenport. I hope you have not 
forgotten me — Gerard Hillersdon, son of the Rector of 
Helmsleigh V 

He stood bareheaded in the faint evening light — half 
dusk, half moonlight — holding out his hand to her; but 
she did not take the extended hand, and she was evi- 
dently anxious to pass on without any conversation with 
him. 

‘ No, I have not forgotten — but I am hurrying home to 
1113^ father. Good night, Mr. Hillersdon.’ 

He would not let her go. 

‘ Spare me a few minutes — only a few minutes ? ’ he 
pleaded. ‘ I won’t delay your return. Let me walk by 
your side ? My sister, your old friend Lilian, is living in 
London with me. She would like to go to see you if you 
will let her ? ’ 

‘ She was always kind — but it is impossible. My 
father and I have done with the world in which your sis- 
ter lives. We are living ver3" humbly, but not unhappily 
— at least, I have only one trouble and that would be the 
same, or perhaps worse, if we were living in a palace.’ 

‘ Do you think my sister w^ould value or love you less 
because you are working to maintain your father ? Oh, 
Miss Davenport, 3^ou cannot think so meanly of an old 
friend ? ’ 

‘ No, no ; I am sure she would be as kind as ever — but 
I would rather not see her. It would give me intense 
pain — it would recall past miseries. I have tried to blot 
out all memory of my past life — to exist only in the 
present. I get on very well,’ with a sad little smile. 


170 The World j The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘ while I can do that. Please don’t make it more difficult 
for me ? Good night.’ 

She stopped, and this time it was she who held out her 
hand in friendly farewell. 

He took the poor little hand, so small, so delicately 
fashioned, in its shabby cotton glove that had been wash- 
ed and neatly darned. He took her hand, and held it 
gently, but with no intention of accepting his dismissal. 

‘ Let me walk home with you ? ’ he said, ‘ I have so 
much to say to you.’ 

‘ I would rather not. I am used to being alone.’ 

‘Apart of the v/ay — at least, just a little way? I 
want to tell you of all the changes that have happened 
since you left Helmsleigh.’ 

‘ They cannot concern me. I tell you again I have done 
with all that life. I can have no interest in it.’ 

‘ Not even in my sister’s fate ? She was your friend.’ 

‘ She was, and a very dear friend, but all that is past 
and gone. I want to know nothing about her, except 
that she is well and happy.’ 

‘She is both — happier than when you knew her. She 
is in that exalted condition of happiness which seems 
common to girls who are engaged to be married — curious 
when one considers their opportunities of appraising the 
joys of domestic life in the persons of their fathers and 
mothers.’ 

‘ She is engaged,’ mused Hester, forgetful at once of 
her resolve not to be interested, and all a woman in her 
quick sympathies. ‘ Is the gentleman anyone I knew at 
Helmsleigh ? ’ 

‘No; he did not come to Helmsleigh until after you 
left. He succeeded your father as curate ; but he is now 
in London. He is the Vicar of St. Lawrence’s. You 
may have seen him at Lady Jane’s Club.’ 

‘No: I very seldom go to the club. I give most ol 
my leisure to my father.’ 

‘ Mr. Davenport is pretty well, I hope ? ’ inquired Ger- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 171 


ard, hardly knowing how to avoid giving her pain in any 
allusion to her father. 

‘ Yes, thank you. He has tolerable health ; only — 
there is no use in hiding it from you — there is always 
the old trouble to fear. It does not come often, but it is 
a constant fear.* 

‘ He is not cured ? He still gives way to the old temp- 
tation ? * 

‘ Sometimes. He is very good. He struggles against 
that dreadful inclination ; but there are times when it is 
stronger than himself. He fought a hard battle with 
himseK while we were in Australia — tried to gain his 
self-respect and the respect of his fellow-men. He suc- 
ceeded in getting profitable employment as a clerk. We 
were doing quite well; but the evil hour came. He was 
tempted by foolish friendl}^ people, who laughed at my 
anxieties about him — and the end was madness. He was 
dismissed from the office where he was a gentleman and 
a person of importance, with a good salary, and he was 
glad to drop into a lower form of employment ; and he 
sank and sank to almost the lowest in the city of Mel- 
bourne. His friends had ceased to care for him. They 
called him irretrievable. So then I took the care of his 
life upon my own shoulders. I had earned a little money 
by giving lessons in a depot for sewing machines, where 
I learnt a good many improvements in machine work — 
improvements that are not yet common in England — and 
I had saved just enough to pay our passage .home — a 
steerage passage. I brought him home, a sad wreck, 
hopeless, broken down in body and mind, and we found 
lodgings in Chelsea — very cheap and very humble, but 
clean and wholesome. A distant relation of my father’s 
pays the rent. We have lived there ever since. I 
thought at first that I should be able to find pupils for 
singing, and that my German education would help me 
in that way ; but I found very soon how hopeless that is, 
especially when one is living in a poor neighborhood and 


172 The Worldj The Flesh, and The Devil. 


wearing a threadbare gown, And then I was lucky 
enough to discover a mantle-maker in Knightsbridge who 
wanted what is called a braiding hand, and as my know- 
ledge of the latest sewing machine enabled me to do this 
kind of work better than most girls, I soon got regular 
employment, and I have been able to make my living 
ever since/ 

A poor living and a hard life, I fear,’ said Gerard. 

‘ Oh, we have enough. We are just comfortable, father 
and I, and he is so fond of me and so good to me that 
I ought to be thankful and happy.’ 

‘ And have you no recreation, no variety in your exist- 
ence ? Is it all hard work ? ’ 

‘ I have the choir practice. That makes a little change 
now and then, only I don’t like to leave my father too 
often.’ 

‘ Does he do nothing ? ’ 

‘ He reads the papers at the free library, and in fine 
weather he does a little gardening.’ 

‘ But he does nothing to help you — he earns nothing ? ’ 

‘No, he is past all that. If he could earn money evil 
would come of it. As it is his pockets are always empty, 
poor dear, and he cannot pay for the dreadful stuflF that 
would madden his brain. Brandy and chloral cost money, 
luckily for him and for me.’ 

‘ Will you let Lilian help you ? ’ asked Gerard. ‘ We 
are rich now, ridiculously rich. We hold our wealth in 
trust for All who need it. Let my sister do something to 
make your life lighter. She shall put a sum of money 
into the Knightsbridge Bank to your credit, open an ac- 
count for you, and you can draw the money as you want 
it. She shall do that to-morrow. Consider the thing 
done.’ 

‘ Do not dream of it, Mr. Hillersdon,’ she answered, in- 
dignantly. ‘ I would never touch a sixpence of that 
money. Do you suppose I would take alms from you or 
anyone else while I am young and strong, and am able to 


The Worldy The Fleshy and The Devil, 173 

get regular work ? I wonder you can think so poorly of 
me/ 

‘ I wonder you can be so cruel as to refuse my friend- 
ship — for in refusing my help you deny me the privilege 
of a friend. It is mere stubbornness to reject a small 
share in Lilian’s good fortune. I tell you again we are 
absurdly rich.’ 

If you were twice as rich as the richest of the Roths- 
childs I would not sacrifice my independence. If I were 
penniless and my father ill that would be different. I 
might ask your sister to help me.’ 

" And must I do nothing to lighten your burden, to 
soften your hard life ? ’ 

‘ It is not a hard life. It is the life of thousands of girls 
in this great city — girls who are contented with their lot, 
and are bright and happy. I am luckier than many of 
them, for my work is better paid.’ 

‘ But you were not born to this lot ! ’ 

‘ Peibaps not ; but I hardly think that makes it any 
worse to bear. I have lived the life long enough to be 
accustomed to it.’ 

They were in Eaton-square by this time, the long and 
rather dreary square, with its tall, barn-like church, which 
even fashion cannot make beautiful. When they were 
about half-way between the church and the western end 
of the square Hester stopped abruptly. 

^ I must beg you to come no farther,’ she said, and there 
was a resolute look in her pale proud face in the* light of 
the street lamp that told him he must obey. 

‘ Good night, then,’ he said, moodily. ‘ You will at 
least tell me where you live ? ’ 

‘ No ; there would be nothing gained. My father and 
I only ask to be forgotten.’ 

She hurried away from him, and he stood there in 
moonlight and gaslight, in the dull level square thinking 
how strange life is. 

Should he follow her and find out where she lived ? 


174 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


No ; that would be a base and vulgar act, and he might 
find her address without that sacrifice of self respect and 
risk of her contempt. He could find put at the club, of 
whose choir she was a member. She fancied herself safely 
hidden under her assumed name, no doubt; but he had 
heard that alias from Lady Jane, and it would be easy 
enough to find out the dwelling-place of Hester Dnle. 

He walked home melancholy, and yet elated. He was 
glad to have found her. It seemed as if a new life were 
beginning for him that night. 

He did not go to any of the clubs which invite the 
footsteps of youth betwixt midnight and morning. Danc- 
ing tempted him not, neither music nor cards. He was 
out of tune with all such common amusements, and the 
commonplace emotions which they produce. He felt as 
Endymion felt after the mystery of the cavern ; felt as if 
in that walk in the dim evening shadows and in 
the bright moonlight he had been in another world, and 
now was back in the old world again, and found it pass- 
ing dull. 

All was silent in his house when he went in, but 
through an open window in the lofty hall a chilling wind 
crept in and stirred the palm leaves, and awakened weird 
harmonies in an ^olian harp that hung near the case- 
ment. His favorite reading lamp was burning on the 
Chippendale table in his study, that room which owed its 
exij>tence to Justin Jermyns taste rather than his own, 
and was yet in all things as his own taste would have 
chosen. 

The one discreet footman who was waiting up for him 
received his orders and retired, and as his footsteps slowly 
died away in the corridor, Gerard Hillersdon felt the 
oppression of an intolerable solitude. 

There were letters on a side table. Of all the numerous 
deliveries in the Western district none ever failed to 
bring a heap of letters for the millionaire — invitations, 
letters of introduction, begging letters, circulars, prospec- 


The World j The Fleshy and The Devil, 175 


tuses of every imaginable mode and manner of scheme 
engendered in the wild dream of the speculator. He 
only glanced at these things, and then flung them into a 
basket which his secretary cleared every morning. His 
secretary replied to the invitations ; he had neatly en- 
graved cards expressive of every phase of circumstances 
— the pleasure in accepting — the honor of dining — the 
regret that a prior engagement — and all the rest. The 
chief thing which money had done for Gerard Hillersdon 
was to lessen the labour of life — to shunt all his burdens 
upon other shoulders. 

This is what wealth can do. If it cannot always buy 
happiness, it can generally buy ease. It seems a hard 
thing to the millionaire that he must endure his own 
gout, and that he cannot hire someone to get up early in 
the morning f6r him. 

Among all the letters which had accumulated since six 
o’clock, there was only one that had interested him, a 
long letter from Edith Champion, who had the feminine 
j)assion for writing lengthily to the man she loved, albeit 
of late he had rarely replied in any more impassioned 
form than a telegram. 

^ It is so much nicer to talk,’ he told her when she re- 
proached him, ' and there is nothing to prevent our meet- 
ing.’ 

‘But there is. There are whole days on which we don’t 
meet — my Finchley days.’ 

‘True. But then we are so fresh to each other the day 
after. Why discount our emotions by writing about them ? 
I love to get your letters, all the same,’ he added, kindly. 
‘Your pen is so eloquent.’ 

‘ I can say more with my pen than I ever dare to say 
with my lips,’ she answered. 

Her letter to-night was graver than usual. 

‘ I have been at Finchley all day — such a trying day. 
1 think the end is coming — at last, the doctors have told 
me they do not give him much longer. I cannot say I 


176 The )^orld, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


fear he is dying, since you know that his death will mean 
the beginning of a new life for me, with all the hope and 
gladness of my girlhood ; and yet my mind is full of fear 
when I think of him and of you, and of what my life has 
been for the last three years. I do not think I have 
failed in any duty to him. I know that I have never 
thwarted him, that I have studied his wishes in the ar- 
rangement of our lives, have never complained of the dull 
people he brought about me, or refused to send a card to 
any of his city friends. If he had objected to your 
visits I should have given up your acquaintance. I have 
never disobeyed him. But he liked to see you in his house; 
he never felt the faintest pang of jealousy, though he 
must have known that you were more to me than any 
common friend. I have done my duty, Gerard ; and 
yet I feel myself disgraced somehow by these three years 
of my married life. I was sold like a slave in the mar- 
ket-place, and though such bargains are the fashion now- 
ada3^s, and everybody approves of the market and the 
barter, yet a woman who has consented to be bought by 
the highest bidder, cannot feel very proud of herself in 
after life. It is nearly over, Gerard, and by and by you 
must teach me to forget. You must give me back my 
girlhood. You can, and you only. There is no one else 
who can — no one — no one.' 

He sat brooding with that letter open before him. Yes, 
he was bound as fast as ever man was bound — bound by 
every obligation that could constrain an honest man. Con- 
science, feeling, honour alike constrained him. This was 
the woman to whom he gave his heart four years ago, in 
the bright morning of a young man's life — in that one 
bright year of youth when all pleasures, hopes, and fan- 
cies are new and vivid, and when the feet that tread this 
workaday earth move as lightly as if they were shod like 
Mercury's. What a happy year it had been ! What a 
bright, laughing love ! Though he might look back now 
and sneer at his first love as commonplace and conven- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 177 


tional, he could but remember how sunny the world had 
been, how light his heart, how keen his enjoyment of life 
in those thoughtless days — before he had learnt to think ! 
Yes : that had been the charm of existence — he had lived 
in the present. He must try to live in the present now 
— to look neither backward nor forward — to enjoy as the 
butterflies enjoy—without memory, without forecast. 

He had not forgotten the opening chapter of the Peau 
de Chagrin, — the dismal centenarian in the bric-a-brac 
shop, the man with the face like a death’s head, the 
dreary Stoic who had existed for a hundred years, and 
yet had never lived. He had the novel on the table be- 
fore him — an edition de luxe, richly illustrated, with 
duplicate engravings here and there on India paper. The 
story had a curious fascination for him, and he could not 
rid himself of the idea that the consumptive Valentin 
was his own prototype. In a curious fanciful indulgence 
of this grim notion, he had nailed a large sheet of draw- 
ing paper on the panelled wall that faced his writing-table. 
He had no enchanted skin to nail on the white paper, to 
indicate by its gradual contraction the wasting of his 
own life — the hurrying feet of Death ; but he had in- 
vented for himself a gauge of his strength and nervine 
vitality. Upon the elephantine sheet he had drawn with 
a bold and rapid pen the irregular outline of an imaginary 
chagrin skin, and from time to time he had drawn other 
lines within this outline, always following the original 
form. In the steadiness and force of the line his pen 
made he saw an indication of the steadiness of his nerves^ 
the soundness of his physical health. Of the five lines 
upon the white paper the innermost showed weakest and 
most uncertain. There had been a gradual deterioration 
from the first line to the fifth. 

To-night, after a long interval of melancholy thought, 
he rose suddenly, dipped a broad-nibbed pen into a capa- 
cious inkpot, and with slow, uncertain hand traced the 
sixth line — traced it with a hand so tremulous that this 


178 The Worldy The fleshy and The Devil, 


last line differed more markedly from the line immedi- 
ately before it than the fifth line differed from the first 
bold outline. Yet between the first and the fifth line 
there had been an interval of nearly six months, while 
between the fifth and the sixth the interval was but 
three days. 

The element of passion with all its fever of hope and 
expectancy, had newly entered into his life. 



CHAPTER XII. 

OUT WENT MY HEART’S NEW FIRE, AND LEFT IT COLD.” 

iERARD HILLERSDON and Mrs. Champion 
met but rarely during the month of May. 
Doomed men are apt to linger beyond the 
hopes or anticipations of their medical atten- 
dants, and the famous physician from Caven- 
dish square continued his bi-weekly visits through 
all the bright long sunny days, given over to the 
perpetual pursuit of pleasure — a chase from which 
Mrs. Champion’s handsome face and form were missing. 
Other figures there were as perfect, other faces as famous 
for their charms ; and it was only once in a way that one 
of the butterflies noted the absence of that Queen butter- 
fly ; it was only once in a way that friendship murmured 
with a sigh, ‘ Poor Mrs. Champion, mewed up with an 
invalid husband all through this lovely season ! ’ 

Edith Champion gave the fading life her uttermost 
devotion. She had a keen sense of honour, after all — 
this wife who had gone on loving her first lover all 
through her married life. She had a more sensitive con- 
science than her world would have readily believed. She 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 179 


wanted to do her duty to the dying husband, so that she 
might surrender herself heart and mind to a new life of 
gladness when he should be at peace, and yet feel no sting 
of remorse, and yet have no dark, overshadowing memory 
to steal across her sunlight. 

With this laudable desire, she spent the greater part of 
her life at Finchley, where she had taken a villa near the 
doctor's house, so as to be within call by day or night. 
She isolated herself from all friends and acquaintances 
except Gerard Hillersdon, and even him she saw only two 
or three times a week, driving into London and taking 
tea in the cool Hertford- street drawing-room, with her 
nerves always somewhat strained in the dread of some 
urgent telegram that should call her back to her duties. 

‘ The end may come at any moment,' she said. ‘ It 
would be dreadful if I were absent at the last.' 

^ Do you think it would really matter — to him ? ' asked 
Gerard. 

‘I think it would. He rarely addresses me by name, 
but I think he always knows me. He will take things 
from nay hand — food or medicine — which he will not take 
from his nurses. They tell me he is much more restless 
when I am not there. I can do very little for him ; but 
if I can make him just a shade easier and calmer by sit- 
ting at his bedside it is my duty to be there. I feel that 
it is wrong even to be away for a couple of hours this 
afternoon — but if 1 did not leave him and that dreary, 
dreary house olice in a way I think my brain would go 
as his has gone.' 

^ Is the house so very dreadful ? ' 

^ Dreadful, no. It is a charming house, well-furnished, 
the very pink of neatness, in the midst of a delightful old 
garden. It is what one knows about it — the troubled 
minds that have worn themselves out in those prim, 
orderly rooms, the sleepless eyes that have stared at those 
bright, pretty wall-papers, the agonies and wild delusions, 
the attempted suicides, the lingering deaths ! When I 


180 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


think of all these things the silence of the house seems 
intolerable, the ticking of the clock a slow torture. But 
you will teach me to forget all that by and by, Gerard : 
You will teach me to forget, won’t you V 

That was the only allusion she had ever made of late 
to the near future. It was forgetfulness she yearned for, 
as the chief boon the future could bestow. 

‘ You cannot think how long this summer has seemed 
to me,’ she said. ‘ I hope I am not impatient, that I 
would not hasten the end by a single day — but the days 
and the hours are terribly long.’ 

Half an hour was the utmost respite that Mrs. Cham- 
pion allowed herself in that cool perfumed room, tSte-a-tete 
with her first lover, surrounded with all the old frivolities, 
the dainty tea-table, with tiny sandwiches, aud heaped up 
fruit, the automatic Japanese fan, mounted on a bamboo 
stand, set in motion with the slightest touch, the new 
books and magazines scattered about, to be carried off in 
her Victoria presently, poor solace of wakeful nights. 
Only half an hour of converse with the man she loved, 
broken into very often by some officious caller, who saw 
her carriage at the door, and insisted upon being let in. 

It seemed to her now and then that Gerard was some- 
what absent and restrained during these brief tSte-a-t6tes, 
but she attributed his languid manner to the depressing 
nature of all she had to tell him. Her own low spirits 
communicated themselves to him. 

‘We are so thoroughly in sympathy,’ she told herself. 

He left her one afternoon late in June, and instead of 
going into the Park where the triple rank of carriages by 
the Achilles statue offered a bouquet of high-bred beauty, 
and the latest triumphs of court dressmakers to the eye 
of the lounger, he walked past the Alexandra Hotel and 
dropped into Sloane-street, and thence to Chelsea. His 
feet had taken him in that direction very often of late. 

He had found no difficulty in discovering Hester’s 
dwelling place, for on his way to the St. Cecilia Club he 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


181 


had stumbled against old Davenport, bottle-nosed, shabby, 
but wearing clean linen, carefully brushed clothes, and 
with a certain survival of his old Oxford manner. 

Neither drunken habits nor dark vicissitudes had im- 
paired the old man’s memory. He recognized Hillersdon 
at a glance, and cordially returned his greeting. 

‘Wonderful changes have come about since we saw 
each other in Devonshire, Mr. Hillersdon,’ he said. ‘I 
have gone very low down the ladder of Fortune, and you 
have gone very high up. I congratulate you upon your 
good luck — not undeserved, certainly not. It was a brave 
deed, my dear young friend, and merited a handsome re- 
ward. I read the story in the newspapers.’ 

‘ A much exaggerated version of the truth, no doubt. 
I’ll walk your way, if you please, Mr. Davenport, I should 
like to hear how the world has used you.’ 

‘Scurvily, sir, very scurvily; but perhaps no worse 
than I deserved. You remember what Hamlet says: 
“ Use every man after his desert; and who shall ’scape 
whipping ? ” I don't like to take you out of -your way, 
Mr. Hillersdon.’ 

‘ My way is no way. I was only strolling with no 
settled purpose.’ 

They were on the Chelsea embankment, where the old 
houses of Cheyne Walk still recall the old world quiet of 
a day that is dead, while the Suspension Bridge and Bat- 
tersea Park tell of an age that means change and pro- 
gress. 

‘ You like old Chelsea and its associations,’ said Daven- 
port. 

‘ Very much, I remember the place when I was a boy, 
and I recognize improvement everywhere ; but I grieve 
over the lost landmarks, Don Saltero, the old narrow 
Cheyne Walk, the sober shabbiness — ’ 

‘ There are older things that I remember — in the days 
when my people lived, in Lowndes-square, and I used to 
come fresh from Balliol to take my fill of pleasure in the 


182 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


London season. father was a prosperous Q.C., a man 
employed in all the great cases where intellect and oratory 
were wanted. He was earning a fine income — though 
not half as much as your famous silk-gowns earn nowa- 
days — and he spent as fast as he earned. He had a large 
family and was very liberal to his children —and when 
he died, in the prime of life, he left his widow and family 
the fag-end of a lease, a suite of Louis Quatorze furni- 
ture, already out of fashion, a choice collection of Wedge- 
wood. and a few Fronts, Tophams, Hunts, and Duncans. 
He had put away nothing out of the big fees that had 
been pouring in for the last fifteen years of his life. He 
used to talk about beginning to save next year, but that 
next year never came. The sale of the lease and furni- 
ture made a little fund for my mother and three unmar- 
ried daughters. For me and my brothers the world was 
our oyster — to be opened as best we might.’ 

‘ You had scholarships to help you.’ 

‘ Yes, Greek and Latin were my only stock in trade. A 
friend of ray father’s gave me a small living within a 
couple of years of my entering priest’s orders, and on 
the strength of that I married, and took private pupils. 
I lost my wife when Hetty was only twelve years old, 
but things had begun to go wrong before then. My sec- 
ond living was in a low district, village and vicarage on 
clay soil, too many trees, and no drainage. The devil’s 
tooth of neuralgia fastened itself upon me, body and 
bones, and my life for some years was a perpetual fight 
with pain — like Paul I fought with beasts — invisible 
beasts — that gnawed into my soul. Here is my poor 
little domicile. I hardly knew we had walked so far.’ 

He had taken his homeward way automatically, while 
Gerard walked beside him, through shabby streets of those 
small semi-detached houses which the builder has devised 
for needy gentility and prosperous labour — here the heal- 
thy mechanic with five and thirty shillings a week, cordu- 
roy trousers and shirt sleeves ; there the sickly clerk, with 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 183 


a weekly guinea and a thread-bare alpaca coat. Here clean 
and shining windows and flower boxes, there dirt and 
slatternliness, broken bottles, and weeds in the tiny fore- 
court, misery and squalor in its most hideous aspect, 
Gerard had marked the shabbiness of the neighbourhood, 
and he felt that-in the midst of this sordid labyrinth he 
should And his Ariadne, tliongh her hand would never 
have furnished him with the clue. 

The house before which Mr. Davenport stopped was no 
better then the other houses which they had passed, but 
the best had been made of its shabbiness, the forecourt 
was full of stocks and carnations, and a row of Mary 
lilies marked the boundary rail which divided this tiny 
enclosure from the adjacent patch. The window panes 
shone bright and clear, and the window box was a hang- 
ing garden of ivy-leafed geranium, yellow marguerites, 
and mignonette. 

‘ What a pretty little garden,’ exclaimed Grerard. 

" Yes, there are a good many flowers for such a scrap of 
ground. Hetty and I are very fond of our garden 
— weVe a goodish bit of ground at the back. It’s about 
the only thing we can take any pride in with such sur- 
roundings as ours.’ 

And then, lingering at the gate, as Grerard lingered, the 
old man asked — 

‘Will you come in and rest after your walk ? I can 
give you a lemon squash.’ 

‘ That s a tempting ofler upon one of the hottest after- 
noons we have had this year. Yes, I shall be glad to sit 
down for half an hour, if you are sure I shan’t be in your 
way.’ 

‘ I shall be very glad of your company. I get plenty 
of solitude when Hetty is out on her long tramps to 
Knightsbridge. She often passes the house in which her 
grandfather used to entertain some of the best people in 
London — a work-girl, with a bundle under her arm. 
Hard, ain’t it ? 


184 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


He opened the door and admitted his visitor into a 
passage fourteen feet by two feet six, out of which opened 
the front parlour and general living room, a small room, 
nearly square, and with a little stunted cupboard on each 
side of the fire-place. Gerard looked about him with 
greedy eyes, noting every detail. 

The furniture was of the commonest, a pembroke table, 
half a dozen cane-bottomed chairs, a sofa, such as can 
only be found in lodging-house parlours ; but there were 
a few things which gave individuality to the room, and 
in somewise redeemed its sordid shabbiness. Fronting 
the window stood a capacious arm chair, covered with 
apple blossom chintz ; the ugly sofa was draped with soft 
Japanese muslin; a cheap paper screen of cool colouring 
broke the ugly outline of the folding doors, and a few 
little bits of old china and a row of books gave meaning 
to the wooden slabs at the top of the dwarf cupboards. 

There was a bowl of flowers on the table, vivid yellow 
corncockles, which brightened the room like a patch of 
sunlight. 

‘ Try that easy chair,’ said Davenport, ‘ it s uncommonly 
comfortable.’ 

‘ Thanks, no,’ seating himself near the window, ' this 
will do very nicely. That’s your chair, I know.’ 

‘ It is,’ sighed the old man sinking into its cushioned 
depths. ‘ It was Hetty’s present on my last birthday. 
Poor child, she worked extra hard to save enough money 
to buy this chair from a broker in the King’s Road. It 
was a shabby old chair when I first saw it — but I was 
caught by the comfortable shape — and I told my poor 
girl I’d seen a second-hand chair that looked the picture 
of comfort. She didn’t seem to take much notice of what 
I said, and the next time I passed the dealer’s yard — 
where the chair used to stand in the open air amongst a 
lot of other things — it was gone. I told Hetty it had 
disappeared. ‘ Sold, I suppose,’ said she, ^ what a pity 1 ’ 
And nearly a year afterwards, on my birthday, the chair 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 185 


was brought in, freshly covered, as you see it. My poor 
girl had heen paying for it by degrees, a shilling or two 
at a time, ever since I mentioned it to her. How proud 
and happy we both were that day, in spite of our poverty. 
I remembered when I was at the University my brothers 
and sisters and I clubbed together to buy a silver tea 
kettle for my mother on her silver-wedding day — and it 
only resulted in general mortification. She was sorry 
we had spent our money — and she didn’t like the shape 
of the kettle. It was half covered with a long inscrip- 
tion, so we couldn’t change it, and I know two of my 
sisters were in tears about it before the day was over. 
But I must make you that lemon squash — nunc est 
bibendum. Perhaps, though, you’d prefer a John Col- 
lins ? ’ with a curiously interrogative look. ‘ There isn’t 
any gin in the house, but I could send for a bottle, if you 
like.’ 

I much prefer the unsophisticated lemon; though I 
envy a city waiter the facility with which he made his 
name a part of the convivial vocabulary. FalstafF could 
not have done more.’ 

Mr. Davenport opened one of the dwarf cupboards and 
produced tumblers, lemons, and pounded sugar. Then he 
went out of the room, and reappeared in a few minutes 
with a jug of fresh water. His narrow means did not 
permit the luxury of a syphon. He concocted the two 
glasses of lemonade carefully and deliberately, Gerard 
Hillersdon watching him all the time in a melancholy 
reverie; but the image that filled his mind was that of 
the absent daughter, not the form of the father bodily 
present to his eye. 

He was thinking of yonder easy chair, paid for in soli- 
tary shillings, the narrow margin left ’ from the bare 
necessities of daily life. He thought of that refined and 
delicate face, that slender, fragile form, far too finely made 
for life’s common uses — thought of her daily deprivations, 
her toilsome walks, her wearisome monotonous work. 

L 


186 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


Yes, there was the modern wheel upon which feminine 
poverty is racked — the sewing machine. Tt stood in front 
of the window by which he was sitting. She had covered 
it with a piece of art muslin, giving an air of prettiness 
even to the instrument of her toil. A pair of delf candle- 
sticks stood on a little table near the machine, with the 
candles burnt low in the sockets. She had been working 
late last night, perhaps. It maddened him to think that 
out of all his wealth he could do nothing to help her — 
she would take nothing out of his superabundance. If 
he were to heed the appeals of all the strangers who 
wrote to him — pouring out their domestic secrets, their 
needs and troubles, in eight-page letters, he might give 
away every penny of his income — but this one woman, 
whom he yearned to help, would take nothing. This was 
Fate’s sharpest irony. He sipped his lemonade and dis- 
cussed the political situation with Mr. Davenport, whose 
chief occupation was to read the papers at the Free 
Library, and who was an ardent politician. He lingered 
in the hope of seeing Hester before he left. 

It was nearly four o’clock, and the June afternoon had 
a drowsy warmth which was fast beguiling old Nicholas 
Davenport into slumber. His words were coming very 
slowly, and he gradually sank into a blissful silence, and 
was off upon that rapid dream -journey which takes the 
sleeper into a new world in an instant — plunges him 
among people that moment invented whom he seems to 
have known all his life. 

A bee was humming amongst the sweet-scented stocks, 
and a town butterfly was fluttering about the mignonette. 
A hawker’s cry in the next street came with a musical 
sound, as if the hawker had been some monotonous bird 
with a song of x)niy three notes. Still Gerard lingered, 
hoping that the old man would wake presently and re- 
sume' the conversation. He was in despair at the idea of 
leaving without seeing Hester. 

He wanted to see that delicately-modelled face — the 


The World y The Flesh, and The Devil, 187 


face in the Sposalizio — in the daylight. He wanted to 
be her friend, if she would let him. What harm would 
there be in such a friendship ? They were too complete- 
ly severed by the iron wall of circumstances ever to be- 
come lovers. But friends they might be — friends for 
mutual help and comfort. He could share with her the 
good things of this life. She could spiritualize his lower 
nature by the influence of that child-like purity which 
set her apart from the common world. 

He heard a light footstep and then the click of a latch. 
She was at the gate, she was coming in, a slim and grace- 
ful figure in a light cambric gown, and a sailor hat, such 
a neat little white straw hat, which cast pearly shadows 
on the exquisite cheek and chin, and darkened the violet 
eyes. 

She started and blushed crimson on seeing him, and 
cast a despairingly reproachful look at her father who 
had risen confusedly in the midst of a dream. Gerard 
had risen as she entered, and stood facing her. 

‘Don’t be angry with your father or with me. Miss 
Davenport. We happened to meet each other an hour 
ago on the Embankment, and I walked home with him. 
And now that I am admitted to your home you will let 
me bring my sister, I hope. She will be glad to renew 
her old friendship with you. Do. not hold her at arm’s 
length, even if you shut your door against me. You 
know how sympathetic she is.’ 

Hester did not answer him for a minute or so. She 
sank into a chair, and took of the neat little sailor hat, 
and passed her hand across her brow, smoothing the soft 
rippling hair which shadowed the low, broad forehead. 
She looked tired and harassed, almost too weary for 
speech, and at last, when speech came, there was a lan- 
guor in her tone, an accent as of one who submits to fate. 

‘ Yes, I remember,’ she said, ‘ your sister was always 
good and sweet. She was very kind to me ; some of my 
happiest hours were spent with her. But that is all past 


188 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


and done with. It is hardly kind of you to ask me to 
remember ' 

‘ I don t want you to remember the old life. I only 
want you to open your heart to an old friend, who will 
help to make your present life happier. Lilian may come, 
may she not ? I can see you mean yes.’ 

‘ How can I say no, when you are so eager to do me a 
kindness V and then she glanced at the old man piteous- 
ly. ‘If father does not mind a face that will recall his 
residence at Helmsleigh and all he sufiered there.’ 

‘ No, no, Hetty, I don’t mind. I have suffered too 
much, and in too many places, since the Pain devil stuck 
his claws into me. If the people who blame me — who 
talk of me as a drunken old dotard — could suffer an hour 
of the agony I have suffered off and on for months at a 
stretch, they would be a little more charitable in their 
judgments. I am not blaming your father, Mr. Hillers- 
don ; he was very good to me. He bore with me as long 
as he could, till at last I disgraced myself. It was a ter- 
rible scandal ; no man could bear up against it. I felt 
after that night all was over.’ 

‘ Don’t, father, don’t speak of it.’ 

‘ I must, Hetty. I want to tell Mr. Hillersdon all that 
you have iDeen to- me — what a heroine, what a martyr ! ’ 

‘Nonsense, father! .1 have only done what other 
daughters are doing all the world over. And thank God 
you are better now ! You have had very little of the old 
pain for the last two years. You are stronger and better 
living as you do now, than when — when you were less 
careful. Your neuralgia will never come back, I hope.’ 

‘ If Miss Hillersdon dosen’t mind visiting us in this 
shabby lodging, we shall be very pleased to see her,’ said 
Mr. Davenport, brushing away a remorseful tear. ‘It 
cuts me to the heart that my poor girl has not a friend in 
the world, except Lady Jane Twyford.’ 

His request being granted, Gerard had no excuse for 
delaying his departure. He offered his hand to Hester 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


189 


as lie said good-bye, and when her slender fingers touch- 
ed his own, his cheek and brow flushed as if a wave of 
fire had passed over his face, and his eyes grew dim ; only 
for a moment, but that fiery wave had never clouded his 
vision at the touch of any other woman — not even Edith 
Champion, to whom he had given the devotion of years. 
His heart was beating violently as he walked along the 
shabby street, past gardens that were full of summer 
flowers, and forecourts that were no better than rubbish 
heaps, past squalid indigence and struggling poverty. It 
was not until he pulled up under the shadow of the trees 
in Cheyne Walk that the sense of a great joy or a great 
trouble began to abate, and he was able to think calmly. 

He seated himself on a bench near the river, and wait- 
ed till his quickened pulses beat in a more tranquil mea- 
sure. 

‘ I am a fool,' he muttered. ‘ Why should her beauty 
agitate me like this. I have seen beautiful women before 
to-day — women in the zenith of their beauty, not pallid 
and worn like this woman. The woman who is to be my 
wife is handsomer, and in a grander style of beauty. And 
yet, because this one is forbidden fruit every nerve is 
strained, every pulse is ra(*ii)g. 1 am a fool, and the wOi’st 
of fools, remembering what old Dr. South told me. Is 
this sparing myself, is this husbanding my resources ? To 
be so moved by such a tiivial scene — not to be able to 
admire a beautiiul face without being shaken as if by an 
earthquake.' 

He remembered the book upon his writing table, the 
“ Peau de Chagrin," that story which had an irresistible 
fascination for him, every page of which he had hung over 
many a night in his hours of lonely thought. How vain 
had been Valentin's endeavour to lead the passionless 
life in which the oil in the lamp burns slowly. But he 
hoped to prove himself wiser than Balzac's ill-fated hero. 
He, too, had planned for himself an existence free from 
all strong emotions. In his life of millionaire and man of 


190 7 he World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


fashions there were to be no agitations. He looked foT^ 
ward to a future union with Edith as a haven of rest. 
Married to a woman whom he had loved long enough to 
take love for granted, a woman whose fidelity had been 
tested by time, whose constancy he need never doubt, for 
him life would glide softly onward with measured, easy 
pace to sober middle age, and even to the grey dignity of 
wealthy and honoured age. But he, like Valentine, had 
been warned against the drama and passion of life. He was 
to be, not to act or to suffer. 

And for a mere transient fancy, the charm of a pensive 
countenance, the romance of patient poverty, he had let 
his veins run liquid fire, his he^rt beat furiously. He 
was ashamed of his own inconsistency; and presently 
seeing a hansom sauntering along under the trees with a 
horse that looked a good mover, he haiLd the man and 
asked if his horse were fresh enough to drive as far 
as Finchley. Naturally the reply was yes, and in the 
next minute he was being carried swiftly through the 
summer dust with his face to the north. 

He had often meditated this drive to the northern sub- 
urb with his own horses, and then it had seemed to him 
that to approach the house in which Mrs. Champion was 
lengthening out the lees of life would be an error in taste, 
although he and the dying man had been upon the friend- 
liest terms since Edith’s marriage. This afternoon he felt 
a curious eagerness to see the woman to whom he had 
bound himself, a feverish anxiety which subjugated ail 
scruples. 

He drove to the house Mrs. Champion had hired for 
herself, a small villa, in a well kept garden. It was past 
eight when he rang the bell, and the lawn and fiower 
beds were golden in the sunset. He expected to find 
Edith Champion at dinner, and had made up his mind to 
dine with her, tete-a-tete perhaps, for the first time in 
their lives. 

Dinner was out of the question, for the present at any 


The Worldj The Flesh, and The Devil, 


191 


rate. One of the match footmen whose faces he knew in 
Hertford-street came strolling in a leisurely way across 
the lawn, pipe in mouth, to answer the bell, suddenly 
pocketed his pipe and changed his bearing on recogniz- 
ing Mr. Hillersdon, and informed him that Mrs. Champion 
was at Kendal House, and that Mr. Champion was very 
bad. 

‘ Worse than usual do you suppose ? ’ asked Gerard. 

‘ Tm afraid so, sir. Mrs, Champion came home at half- 
past seven, but a messenger came for her while she was 
dressing for dinner, and she just put on her cloak, and 
ran across the road without even a hat. I’m afraid its 
the hend.’ 

‘ Which is Kendal House ? ’ 

‘ I’ll show you, sir.’ 

The footman stalked out into the road with thai slow 
and solemn stalk which is taught to footmen, and which is 
perhaps an element in the trade-unionism of domestic 
service — a studied slowness of movement in all things, 
lest perchance one footman should at any time do the 
work of two. Mrs. Champion’s footman was a person of 
highest quality, and was even now oppressed with a 
sense of resentment at having to perform his duties single- 
handed at Finchley, while his fellow lacquey was leading 
a life of luxurious idleness in Hertford-street. 

He pointed out a carriage entrance in a wall a little 
further up the road, and on the opposite side of the way, 
and to this gate Gerard hurried, and entered a highly re- 
spectable enclosure, a circular lawn girt with gravel drive, 
shrubberies hiding the walls, and in front of him a stately 
square stone house with classic portico, and two wdngs, 
suggesting drawing-room and billiard-roorn. 

The first glance at those numerous windows gave him 
a shock. All the blinds were down. It was over I.e 
thought. Edith Champion was a widow. 

Yes, it was over. The sober, elderly man servant who 
opened the door to him informed him that Mr. Champion 


192 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


had breathed his last at five minutes to eight. Mrs. 
Champion was just in time to be present at bis last 
moments. The end had been peaceful and painless. 

Edith Champion came downstairs, accompanied by the 
doctor, while the servant was talking, her eyes streaming. 
She saw Gerard, and went across the hall to him. 

‘ It is all over,’ she said, agitatedly. ‘ He knew me at 
the last — knew me and spoke my name, just as I thought 
he would. Thank God I was there; 1 was not too late 
for that last word. I did not think I could feel it so 
much, after those long days and weeks of anticipation.’ 

‘ Let me take you over to your own house,’ Gerard said, 
gently. 

She was in her dinner-dress of black gauze and silk, 
with a light summer cloak flung loosely about her, her 
whit^ throat rising out of the gauzy blackness like a 
Parian column, her dark eyes drowned in tears, and tears 
still wet on her pale cheeks. All that was tender and 
womanly in her nature had been shaken by that final 
parting. If she had sold herself to the rich man as his 
slave he had been a most indulgent master, and her slav- 
ery had been of the lightest. 

The doctor attended her to the threshold, and she went 
out leaning on Gerard’s arm. Even in the midst of her 
natural regret there was sweetness in the thought that 
henceforth she belonged to him. It was his privilege and 
his duty to protect her, to think for her in all things. 

‘ You will telegraph to my husband’s solicitor,’ she said 
to the doctor, falteringly, as she dried her tears. ‘He 
will be the proper person to arrange every thing with you, 
I suppose. I shall not leave the Laurels till after ” 

‘ I understand,’ interrupted the doctor, saving her the 
pain of that final word. ‘ All shall be arranged without 
troubling you more than is absolutely necessary.’ 

‘ Good night,’ she said, offering her hand. ‘ I shall not 
forget how kind and thoughtful you always were. He 
could not have been better cared for/ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


193 


Gerard led her out of the formal enclosure, where the 
conifers and evergreens were darkening under the sha- 
dows of night. The gate was open at the Laurels, and 
the stately footman was on the watch for her, his pow- 
,dered head bared to the evening breeze. Within there 
were lights and the brightness of flowers, dinner ready to 
be served, 

‘ You will take something, I hope ? ’ said Gerard, when 
the butler announced dinner. 

They had gone into the drawing room, and she was sit- 
ting with her face hidden in her hands. 

‘No, no, I could not eat anything,’ and then to the but- 
ler, ‘ Mr. Hillersdon will dine. You can serve dinner for 
him, and tell George to bring me some tea here.’ 

‘ Then let me have a cup of tea with you,’ said Gerard. 
‘ I am no more in the mood for dining than you are.’ 

This gratified her, even in the midst of her sorrows. 
Women have an exaggerated idea of the value which men 
set upon dinner, and no sacrifice propitiates them so sure- 
ly as the surrender of that meal. 

Edith Champion did not argue the point. She only 
gave a little sigh, and dried her tears, and became more 
composed. 

‘I think I did my duty to him,’ she said presently. 

‘Most thoroughly. You made him happy, which is 
more than many a wife can say about a husband she has 
adored,’ answered Gerard. 

The footman brought in the tea-table, and lighted the 
candles on the mantel-piece and piano, and drew the cur- 
tains, with an air of wishing to dispel any funereal gloom 
which the shadow of that dark event at Kendal House 
had spread over the room. He and the other servants 
had been talking about the funeral, and their mourning 
already, speculating whether Mr. Champion had left lega- 
cies to such of his servants as had been with him “ say a 
year,” concluded George, footman, who had been in the 
service fourteen months. 


194 The World, The Flesh and The Devil, 


Mrs. Champion made a little motion of her hand to^ 
wards the teapot, and George poured out the tea. She 
felt that the etiquette of grief would not allow her to per- 
form that accustomed office. She sat still, and allowed 
herself to be waited upon, and sipped and sighed, while 
Gerard also sipped in pensive silence. 

He was thinking that this was the second time within 
a very few hours that he was taking tea with Edith 
Champion, and yet what a gap those few hours had cloven 
across his life. The woman he had loved so long, and to 
whom he had irrevocably pledged himself, was free from 
her bondage. There could be no longer doubt or hesi- 
tancy in their relations. A certain interval must be con- 
ceded to the prejudices of society; and then, at the end 
of that ceremonial widowhood this woman, whom he had 
loved so long, would lay aside her weeds, and put on her 
wedding-gown, ready to stand beside him at the altar. 
For months he had known that Mr. Champion's end was 
imminent, and yet to-night it seemed to him as if he had 
never expected the man to die. 

The silence was growing oppressive before either the 
lady or her guest found speech. The footman had retired, 
leaving the tea-table in front of his mistress, and they 
were alone again. 

‘ You will not remain in this house after the funeral, 
of course,' said Gerard, having cast about for something 
to say. 

‘ No, I shall leave England immediately. I have been 
thinking of my plans while you and I have been sitting 
here. I hate myself for my egotism ; but I could not go 
on thinking of — him. It would do no good. I shall not 
easily forget him, poor fellow. His face and his voice 
will be in my thoughts for a long time to come — but I 
could not help thinking of myself too. It seems so strange 
to be free — to be able to go just where I like — not to be 
obliged to follow a routine. I shall go to Switzerland as 
soon as I can get ready. I shall take Rosa Gresham with 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 195 


me. She is always enchanted to turn her back upon that 
adorable parish of hers.' 

* But why should you go away ? ' 

‘ It will be best. If I were to stay in England you and 
I would be meeting, and now — now that he is gone peo- 
ple would rake up the past, and say ill-natured things 
about us. It will be far better that we should see very 
little of each other till the year of my widowhood is over ; a 
long time, Gerard, almost long enough for you to forget me.' 

Her tone implied that such forgetfulness must needs be 
impossible. 

‘What if I refuse to submit to such a separation, even 
to propitiate Mrs. Grundy ? We have treated that wor- 
thy personage in a very off-hand manner hitherto. Why 
should we begin to care about her ? ' 

‘ Because everything is different now he isgoi^e. While 
my husband approved of my life nobody could presume 
to take objection to anything I might do, but I stand 
alone now and must take care of my good name — your 
future wife’s good name, Gerard ! ' 

‘How sweetly you put the question. But my dear 
Edith, must we really be parted so long ? Could people 
talk about us if you and I were living in the same town, 
seeing each other every day ? ' 

‘ You don’t know how ill-natured people can be. In- 
deed, Gerard, it will be better for both our sakes." 

‘ Not for my sake,' he said earnestly. 

He had gone to Finchley that evening upon a sudden 
impulse, as if he had been flying from an unimagined 
peril. He had felt, vaguely, as if his first love were slip- 
ping away from him, as if an effort were needed to 
strengthen the old bonds ; and now the woman who 
should have helped him to be true was about to forsake 
him — to sacrifice inclination and happiness to the babbling 
crowd. 

‘ What can it matter how people talk of us ? ' he cried 
impetuously. ‘ We have to think of ourselves and our 


196 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


own happiness. Remember how short life is, and what 
need we have to husband our brief span of years. Why 
waste a year, or a half year, upon conventionalities ? Let 
me go with you wherever you go. Let us be married 
next week.’ 

^No, no, no, Gerard. God knows I love you, only too 
dearly, but I will not be guilty of deliberate disrespect to 
him who has gone. He was always good to me — kind 
and indulgent to a fault. I should have been a better 
wife, perhaps, if he had been a tyrant. I will not insult 
him in his grave, A year hence ; a year from this day 
I shall belong to you ! ’ 

‘ And Mrs. Grundy will have no fault to find with you 
‘‘ Content to dwell in decencies for ever,” ’ quoted Gerard, 
with a touch of scorn. ‘ Well, you must have your own 
way. I have pleaded, and you have answered. Good 
night. I suppose I shall be allowed to bid you good bye 
at the railway station before you leave England.’ 

‘ Of course. Rosa shall write to you about our plans 
directly they are settled. You will be at the funeral, Ger- 
ard, will you not ? ’ 

‘Naturally. Once more, goodnight.’ 

They clasped hands, she tearful stilly ready to break 
down again at any moment, and so he left her. 

The hansom had waited for him, the horse’s head in a 
nosebag, the driver asleep on his perch. 

‘Only a year, and you are mine as I am yours,’ mused 
Gerard, as he was driven westward. ‘ But a year some- 
times makes a wide gap in a life. What will it do in 
mine ? ’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 197 



CHAPTER XIII. 

“Foil SOME MUST STAND, AND SOME MUST FALL OR FLEE.” 

R. CHAMPION had been laid at rest in a 
brand new vault at Kensal Green for nearly a 
month, and his widow was at Interlachen, with 
the useful cousin, maid, and courier, excur- 
sionising mildly among the snow peaks and 
iers, playing Chopin s nocturnes, reading Shel- 
Keats, and Swinburne, and abandoning herself 
to a vague melancholy, which found relief in the 
solitude of everlasting hills, and the seclusion of private 
sitting-rooms at the hotel. Edith Champion was at 
Interlachen, whence she wrote to Gerard Hillersdon twice 
a week long letters in a fine, firm hand, on the smoothest 
paper, with a delicate perfume of wood violets — letters 
descriptive of every drive and every ram’jle among the 
hills, letters meditative upon the poetry she had been 
reading, or the last German novel, with its diffuse senti- 
mentality and its domestic virtues, letters which generally 
contained a little white woolly flower, plucked amidst 
perpetual snows; letters which did all that letters can do 
to bridge the distance between the lovers. Gerard replied 
less lengthily, but with unfailing tenderness, to all those 
letters of June and July. He wrote from his heart, or 
he told himself that he was so writing. He wrote with 
a large panel portrait of his sweetheart upon his desk, in 
front of him, a portrait which met his eyes whenever he 
lifted them from his paper, a life-like likeness of the 
beautiful face and figure, gorgeous in Court gown and 
mantle, a tiara on the imperial head, a riviere of diamonds 
upon the perfect neck ; a portrait whose splendour would 


198 The Worla, me Flesh, and The Devil, 


have been enough for a princess of the blood royal, yet 
which seemed only in harmony with Edith Champion’s 
beauty. 

Sometimes between that face, with its grand lines, and 
classic regularity, there would come the vision of another 
face, altogether different, yet no less beautiful — the 
ethereal loveliness of the Raffaelle Madonna, the elongated 
oval cheeks and chin and straight sharply chiselled nose, 
the exquisite refinement of the pensive lips and delicate 
arch of the eyebrows over violet eyes, the pearly tints of 
a complexion in which there was no brilliancy of colour, 
no peach bloom, only a transparent fairness, beneath 
which the veins above the temples and around the eyes 
showed faintly azure — an oval face framed in shadowy 
brown hair. With what a fatal persistence this image 
haunted him ; and yet he had seen Hester Davenport 
only once since that afternoon at Chelsea, when the old 
man introduced him into the humble lodging-house parlor. 
Once only had he returned there, and that was to escort 
his sister, who was delighted to renew her acquaintance 
Avith the curate’s beautiful daughter. That had happened 
three weeks ago, and Lilian and Hester had met several 
times since then — meetings of which Gerard had heard 
every detail. 

And now the London season was drawing to its close, 
and Lilian had to leave her brother’s house in order to do 
her duty as an only daughter, and accompany her father 
and mother to Royat, where the Rector was to take a 
course of waters, which was to secure him an immunity 
from gout for the best part of a year, until the ‘cure’ 
season came round again and the London physicians had 
decided where he should go. It would be Lilian’s last 
journey as a spinster with her father and mother. She 
was to be married early in the coming year, and to take 
upon herself husband and parish — that parish of St. 
Lawrence the Martyr to which she had already attached 
herself, and whose schools, alms-houses, dispensary, night- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


199 


Kefuge, orphanage, and reading-room, were as familiar to 
her as the old day nursery transformed into a morning- 
room at Helmsleigh Rectory. 

It was her last morning at Hillersdon House, and she 
was breakfasting tSte-^-t^te with her brother, a rare 
pleasure, as Gerard had been very erratic of late, rarely 
returning home till the middle of the night, and not often 
leaving his own room till the middle of the day. He had 
been drinking deep of the cup of pleasure, as it is offered 
to youth and wealth in the height of the London season; 
but pleasure in this case had not meant debauchery, and 
the only vice to which late hours tempted him was an 
occasional hour s worship of the mystic number nine or a 
quiet evening at piquet or poker. And in this drinking 
of the pleasure-chalice, he told himself that he was in 
no wise unduly consuming the candle of life, inasmuch as 
there was no pleasure which London could offer him that 
could stir his pulses or kindle the fiery breath of passion. 
His heart beat no quicker when he held the bank at 
baccarat than when he sat over a book alone in his den. 
Time had been when an hours play fired his blood, 
and set his temples throbbing ; but to the millionaire loss 
or gain mattered little. There was only the pleasant ex- 
ultation of success for its own sake ; success which was 
no more delightful than if he had made a good shot at 
bowls on a summer lawn. Thus, he argued, that he was 
living soberly within himself, even when his nights were 
spent among the wildest young men in London, the fre- 
quenters of the after-midnight clubs, and the late restaur- 
ants. 

‘ How nice it is to have a quiet half-hour with you, 
Gerard,’ said Lilian, as they began breakfast, he trifling 
with a devilled sardine, she attacking bread and butter 
and strawberries, while the chefs choicest breakfast dishes 
remained untouched under shining silver covers. 

‘Yes, dear, and how soon such quiet hours will be im- 
p,ossible. I shall miss you dreadfully.’ 


200 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘ And yet, though we have lived under the same roof 
we have seen very little of each other/ 

‘ True, but it has been so sweet to know you were 
here, that I had always a sympathetic confidante near at 
hand/ 

Lilian answered with a sigh. 

‘ You have given me no confidence, Gerard/ ♦ 

' Have I not. Believe me it has been from no lack of 
faith in your honour and discretion. Perhaps it was be- 
cause I had nothing to tell ! ' 

‘ Ah, Gerard, 1 know better than that. You have a 
secret— a secret which concerns Mrs. Champion. I know 
she is something more to you than a common-place 
friend/ 

Gerard laughed to himself ever so softly at his sisters 
naivete. ‘What, has your penetration made that discov- 
ery, my gentle Lilian/ he said. ‘Yes, Edith Champion 
and I are more than common friends. We were plighted 
lovers once, dans le temps, when we were both fresh and 
innocent and penniless. Wisdom and experience inter, 
vened. The young lady was induced to marry an elderly 
money-bag, who treated her very well, and to whom her 
behaviour was perfect. I changed from lover to friend, 
and that friendship was never interrupted, nor did it ever 
occasion the slightest uneasiness to Mr. Champion.’ 

‘And now that Mrs. Champion is a widow, free to marry 
for love V questioned Lilian, timidly. 

‘ In all probability she will become my wife — when her 
mourning is over. Shall you like her as a sister-in-law, 
Lilian V 

‘ How can I do otherwise. She has always been so 
kind to me.’ 

‘Ah, I remember she took you to her dressmaker. I be- 
lieve that is the highest effort of a woman’s friendship.” 

‘ How lightly you speak of her, Gerard, and how coldly 
— and yet I am sure you care for her more than anyone 
else in the world/ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 201 


^ Naturally, and she deserves my affection, after re- 
maining constant to me through the long interregnnrn of 
a loveless marriage/ 

‘She is just the kind of a woman you ought to marry. 
With her beauty and good style she will help you to 
maintain your position, and she will get rid of the friends 
whose influence I fear/ 

‘Which of my friends, Lilian ? ’ 

‘All those who come to this house, except Jack, and 
perhaps you will say Jack is no friend of yours, that 
you are not in touch with him, as you call it/ 

‘He is my friend all the same. Granted that we differ 
upon every point in ethics and creed, I like him because 
he is straight, and strong, and true, and outspoken, and 
hearty — a man to whom I would turn in doubt and diffi- 
culty, in sickness or despair — a good, brave, honest man, 
Lilian, a man to whom I gladly give almost the dearest 
thing I have on earth, my only sister/ 

Tears s[)rang to Lilians eyes at this praise of her lover. 
She could not answer in words for a few moments, but 
she stretched out her hand to her brother, and they sat 
hand clasped in hand. 

‘ How happy I am,’ she faltered at last, ‘ to have won 
him, and to have your love as well.’ 

‘^nd now tell me why you dislike my friends.’ 

‘Because they seem to me all false and hollow — full of 
flowery words and shallow wit — arrogant, superficial, 
making light of all good men’s creeds, dismissing noble 
lives and noble thoughts with a jest. Some of them 
are pleasant enough — Mv. Larose, for instance, with his 
elegant langour, and his rhapsodies about art and archi- 
tecture — Mr. Gambier, with his scheme for new novels, 
which he has the impertinence to tell me will be unfit 
for me to read/ 

‘Poor Gambier, that is his harmless vanity. His most ^ 
ardent desire is to be ranked with Zola and rejected by 
M udie/ 


M 


202 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


^ There is one of your friends whose presence fills me 
with horror, and yet he has more winning manners than 
any of them/ 

' Indeed/ 

‘ The man who laughs at everything, Mr. Jermyn.’ 

' Jermyn the Fate-reader/ 

‘ He has never read my fate.' 

‘ No, he refused to make an attempt. There is a light 
in your sister s countenance that baffles augury," he told 
me, If I were to say anything about her it would be 
that she was created to be happy — but in a nature of that 
kind one never knows what happiness means. It might 
mean martyrdom." So you dislike Justin Jermyn ? ' 

‘ It is not so much dislike as fear that I feel when I 
think of him. When I am in his society I can hardly 
help liking him. He interests and amuses me in spite of 
myself. But it is his bad influence upon you that I 
fear.' 

‘ My dear Lilian, that is all mere girl's talk. Bad in- 
fluence, bosh ! You don't suppose that my experience of 
life since I went to the University has left my mind a 
blank sheet of paper, to be written upon by the first comer. 
Jermyn is a new acquaintance, not a friend, and liis in- 
fluence upon my life is nil. He amuses me — that is all — 
just as he amuses you, by his queer, gnomish ways and 
impish tricks. And now, before you go, tell me about 
Hester Davenport. You have been her friend for the last 
few weeks, and have lightened her business. What will 
she do when you are gone ? ' 

‘ Oh, we shall write to each other. We are going to be 
friends all our lives, and when I am settled at the Vicar- 
age we shall see each other often. She will come to St. 
Lawrence every Sunday to hear Jack preach.' 

‘ That is something for her to look forward to, no doubt; 
but in the meantime she is to go on with her drudgery, I 
suppose, without even the comfort of occasional inter- 
course with a girl of her own rank. Why could you not 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 203 


persuade her to accept an income from me, which would 
be, at least, enough to provide for her and her father ? ’ 

‘ I did not try very hard to overrule her decision, Ger- 
ard. In my heart I could only agree with her that she 
could take no such help from you, or from any one in 
your position. She could not sacrifice her independence 
by allowing herself to be pensioned by a stranger.’ 

‘ I am not a stranger. I know her father s wretched 
story, and he was my fathers curate. That does not 
make me a stranger. I don’t think that either you or 
she realises the position — a man with more money than 
he knows what to do with, who must inevitably squander 
a great deal of his wealth, waste thousands upon futile 
aims. Why should not such a man sink a few thousands 
to provide permanently for the comfort of a girl whose 
story has touched his heart ? I would so settle the money 
that she would receive the income from year to jear, 
withr^ut ever being reminded of its source. There would 
be no humiliation, no sense of obligation; the thing once 
done upon my part would be done for ever. Why should 
it not be ? ’ 

‘ Because she will not have it so, Call her proud if 5 ^ou 
like — I admire her for her pride. She is content with 
the life she leads. She works hard, but she is her own 
mistress, and she is able to do her work at home, and to 
watch over the poor old father, who would inevitably fall 
back into his old dreadful ways if she were to leave him 
too much alone, or if they were more prosperous, and he 
had the command of money. She has told me that their 
poverty is his salvation.’ 

‘ A sorry prospect for a beautiful young woman, who 
under other circumstances might have society at her 
feet.’ 

‘ She does not think of society, or consider herself a 
victim. You have no idea how simple-minded she is. I 
doubt if she even knows that she is lovely — or, if she 
does, she makes very light of her beauty. She told me 


204 The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil. 


that she had been poor all her life, and that nobody had 
ever made much of her, except her father/ 

‘ And you were able to do very little for her, it seems V 

‘ What you would think very little. I could not give 
her costly presents ; her pride would have been up in 
arms at any attempt to patronise her. I gave her books 
and flowers; helped her to make that poor little lodging- 
house sitting-room as pretty and home-like, as simple, in- 
expensive things could make it. We took some walks 
together in Battersea Park, and one lovely morning she 
went for a drive with me as far as Wimbledon, where we 
had a luncheon of buns and fruit on the common, just like 
two schoolgirls. She was as gay and bright that morn- 
ing as if she had not a care in the world. I told her that 
she seemed happier than she had ever been at Helmsleigh, 
and she said that in those days she was oppressed by the 
knowledge of her father s sad failing, which we did not 
know ; but now that we knew the worst, and that he 
seemed really to have reformed, she was quite happy. 
Indeed, she has the bravest, brightest spirit I ever met 
with ! ’ 

‘ Yes, she is full of courage ; but it is hard, very hard,’ 
said Gerard, impatiently ; and then he began to q uestion 
Lilian about her own arrangements, and there was no 
further allusion to Hester Davenport; but there was a 
sense of irritation in Gerard’s mind when he thought over 
his conversation with Lilian in the solitude of his own 
den. 

‘ How feeble women are at the best/ he said to himself, 
pacing to and fro in feverish unrest. ‘ What petty notions 
of help, what microscopic consolations ! A few books and 
flowers, a drive or a walk, a lunch of buns upon Wimble- 
don Common! Notone effort to take her out of that 
slough of despond — not one attempt to widen her horizon; 
a golden opportunity utterly wasted, for Lilian might 
have succeeded where I must inevitably fail. If Lilian 
had been Arm and resolute, as woman to woman, she 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


205 


might have swept away all hesitations, all foolish pride. 
But, no ; she offers her humble friend a few flowers and 
a book or two, and hugs herself with the notion that this 
poor martyr is really happy — that the sewing machine 
and the shabby lodging are enough for her happiness — 
enough for one who should be a queen among women. 
Why, my housemaids are better off— better fed, better 
lodged, with more leisure and more amusements. It is 
intolerable.’ 

He had made up his mind that he would go no more 
to the little street in Chelsea. He had gone in the first 
place as an intruder, had imposed himself upon the father’s 
weakness, and traversed the daughter’s wish so plainly 
ex[>ressed to him on their first meeting. He hated him- 
self for an act which he felt to be mean and unworthy, 
and he determined that after his second visit as his sis- 
ter’s escort he would go there no more ; yet two days 
after Lilian’s departure an irresistible desire impelled him 
to try to see Hester again. He wanted to see if there 
were any justification for Lilian’s optimistic view of 
the case — whether there were’ indeed peace and content- 
ment in that humble home. 

He went in the evening at an hour when he knew 
Hester was to be found at home. However frugally she 
and her father might dine they always dined at seven, so 
that the old man should not suffer that uncomfortable 
reversal of all old habits which is one of the petty stings 
of poverty. The mutton chop, or the little bit of fish 
which constituted his evening meal made a dinner as 
easily as it would have made a supper, and Hester took 
a pleasure in seeing that it was served with perfect clean- 
liness and propriety, a result only attained by some watch- 
fulness over the landlady and the small servant. The 
modest meal was despatched in less than half-an-hour, 
and at half-past seven Hester and her father were to be 
found enjoying their evening leisure — he with his pipe, 
she with a book, which she sometimes read alpud, 


206 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


So Gerard found them upon a delicious summer even° 
ing, which made the contrast between Queen's gate and 
the poorer district westward of Chelsea seem all the more 
cruel. There are coolness, and space, and beauty, tall 
white houses, porticos, balconies brimming over with 
flowers, gaily coloured blinds and picturesque awnings, 
the wide expanse of park and gardens, the cool glinting 
water in the umbrageous distance ; here long straight 
rows of shabby houses, where every attempt at architec- 
tural ornament seemed only to accentuate the prevailing 
squalor. And Hester Davenport lived here, and was to 
go on living here, and he with all his wealth could not 
buy her brighter surroundings. 

He stopped at a bookseller's in the Brompton road and 
bought the best copy of Shelley's Poems which he could 
And, and at a florists on his way he bought a large bunch 
of Marechal Neil roses, and with these gifts in his hand 
he appeared in the small parlour. 

‘ As my sister is far away, I have ventured to come in 
her stead,' he said, after he had shaken hands with father 
and daughter. 

‘ And you are more than welcome,' Mr. Hillersdon, ans- 
wered the old man. ‘ We shall miss your sister sadly. 
Her little visits have cheered us more than anything has 
done since the beginning of our troubles. I hardly know 
what we shall do without her.' 

‘ I am looking forward to the beginning of next year, 
when Miss Hillersdon will be Mrs. Cumberland,' said 
Hester, softly, " and when I am to help her in her parish 
work.' 

‘ Can you find time to help in other people's work ; you 
who work so hard already ? ' 

‘ Oh, I shall be able to spare an afternoon now and 
then, and I shall be interested and taken out of myself 
by that kind of work. ‘ What lovely roses,' she exclaimed, 
as he placed the bunch upon the little table where her 
open book was lying. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 207 

‘ I am very glad you like them. You have other 
flowers, I see,’ glancing at a cluster of bright golden corn 
cockles in a brown vase, ‘ but I hope you will find room 
for these.’ 

‘ Indeed I will, and with delight. My poor little corn 
cockles are put to shame by so much beauty.’ 

‘And I have brought — my sister asked me to bring 
you Shelley,’ he faltered, curiously embarrassed in the 
presence of this one woman, and laying down the prettily 
bound volume with conscious awkwardness. 

‘Did she, really?’ asked Hester, wonderingly, ‘I did 
not think Shelley was one other poets. Indeed I remem- 
ber her telling me that the Rector had forbidden her to 
read anything of Shelley’s beyond a selection of short 
poems. I dare say she mentioned some other poet, and 
your memory has been a little vague. Lilian has given 
me a library of her favourite poets and essayists. 

She pointed to a row of volumes on one of the dwarf 
cupboards, and Gerard went over to look at them. 

Yes, there were the poets women love — Wordsworth, 
Hood, Longfellow, Adelaide Proctor, Jean Ingelow, Eliza- 
beth Barrett- Browning — the poets within whose pages 
there is security from every evil image, from every rend- 
ing of the curtain that is purity. No Keats, with his 
subtle sensuousness which shrouds life’s darkest pictures, 
poets whose key note suggests heavy hothouse atmos- 
phere. No Shelley, with his gospel of revolt against all 
law, human and divine, no Rosetti, or Swinburne; not 
even Byron, whose muse, measured by the wider scope of 
latter day poets, might wear a pinafore and live upon 
the school girl’s bread and butter. The only giant among 
them all was the Laureate, and he was handsomely repre- 
sented in a complete edition, 

‘ I see you have no Shelley,’ said Gerard, ‘ so my mis- 
take was fortunate.’ 

‘ But if Mr. Hillersdon would not let his daughter read 
Shelley — ’ began Hester. 


208 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘ My worthy father belongs to a school that is almost 
obsolete — the school which pretends to believe that the 
human mind is utterly without individuality, or self-re- 
straint, and that to read a lawless book is the first stage 
in a lawless career. You have too much mental power 
to be turned to the right or to the left by any poet, be he 
never so great a genius. Not to have read Shelley, is 
not to have tasted some of the loftiest delights that poetry 
can give us. I am opening a gate for you into an un- 
trodden paradise. I envy you the rapture of reading 
Shelley for the first time in the full vigour of your in- 
tellect.’ 

‘ You are laughing at me when you talk of the vigour 
of my intellect — and as for your Shelley, I know in ad- 
vance that I shall not like him as well as Tennyson/ 

‘ That depends upon the bent of your mind — whether 
you are more influenced by form or colour. In Tennyson 
you have the calm beauty and harmonious lines of a 
Greek temple ; in Shelley, the unreal splendour and 
gorgeous colouring of that heavenly city in the Apo-" 
calypse/ 

They discussed Hester’s poets freely, and went on to 
the novelists and essayists with whom she was most fami- 
liar. Dickens and Charles Lamb were first favourites, 
and for romance Bulwer ; Thackeray’s genius she acknow- 
ledged, but considered him at his best disheartening. 

' I think for people with whom life has gone badly 
Carlyle’s is the best philosophy,’ she said. 

‘ But surely Carlyle is even more disheartening than 
Thackeray,’ objected Gerard. ‘ His gospel is the gospel 
of dreariness.’ 

‘ No, no, it is the gospel of work and noble effort. It 
teaches contempt for petty things.’ 

They talked for some time, Mr. Davenport joining in 
the conversation occasionally, but with a languid air, as 
of a man who was only half alive; and there was an 
undercurrent of complaining in all he said, which con- 


The Worldj The Flesh, and The Devil, 209 


trasted strongly with his daughter’s cheerful spirit. He 
spoke more than once of his wretched health ; his neur- 
algic pains, which no medical man could understand. 

Gerard stayed nearly an hour, would have lingered 
even later if Hester had not told him that she and her 
father were in the habit of walking for an hour in the 
coolness of the late evening. On this hint he took up his 
hat and accompanied father and daughter as far as 
Cheyne Walk, where he left them to walk up and down 
in the summer starlight, very lonely in the great busy 
city, as it seemed to him when he bade them a reluctant 
good night. 

‘ How lovely she is, but how cold,’ he thought, as he 
walked homeward. ‘ She is m.ore like a picture than a 
living, suffering woman. The old man’s reformation sits 
uneasily upon him. Poor wretch, I believe he is longing 
for an outbreak — would sell half his miserable remnant 
of life for a month or two of self-indulgence.’ 

Gerard pondered much upon Davenport’s so-called 
reformation, in the sincerity of which he had very little 
faith. 

It was only because he was penniless that he was sober 
— the longing for alcohol was perhaps as strong as it had 
ever been. If any stroke of luck filled his pockets he 
would break out again as badly as of old. It was on this 
account, doubtless, that his daughter was content to 
labour, to live upon a pittance. Poverty meant the ab- 
sence of temptation. 

After this Gerard Hillersdon spent many an evening 
hour in the Davenport manage. He supplied Hester 
with books and choicest flowers, he took newspapers and 
hot-house grapes to the old man, who eat the grapes with 
a greedy relish, as if he caught faint flavours of the vint- 
ages of Bordeaux and Burgundy in that English fruit. 
His visits and his gifts grew to be accepted as a matter of 
course. Books were Hester s one pleasure, and vshe often 
sat reading late into the night, although she was gener- 


210 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


ally at her sewing-machine before eight o’clock in the 
morning. She was not one of those people who require 
seven or eight hours' sleep. Her rest and recreation were 
in those midnight hours when her father was sleeping, 
and she was alone with her books, sitting in a low wicker 
chair bought for a few shillings from an itinerant basket- 
maker, in the light of the parafHn reading lamp, which 
her own skilful hands prepared every morning. 

Gerard wondered at her placid acceptance of this life 
of toil and monotony. Again and again as he walked 
slowly up and down the shadowy promenade by the 
river he had sought by insidious questionings to discover 
the lurking spirit of rebellion, the revolt against that 
Fate which had doomed her to life-long deprivations. 
No word of complaint was ever spoken by those beauti- 
ful lips, pale in the moonlight. The London season had 
passed her by, with all its pleasures, its smart raiment, 
and bustle of coaching meets and throng of carriages and 
riders in that focus of movement by Albert gate whither 
her footsteps had so often taken her ; she had seen the 
butterflies in all their glory, had seen wmmen inflnitely 
inferior to herself in all womanly graces set off and 
glorified by all the arts of costume and enamel, dyed hair 
and painted eye-brows, into a semblance of beauty, and 
queening it upon the strength of factitious charms ; and 
yet no sense of this world's injustice had embittered her 
gentle spirit. Patience was the key-note of her character. 
If every now and then upon her lonely walks a man 
stopped as if spell-bound at a vision of unexpected 
beauty, or even turned to follow her, she thought only of 
his unmannerliness, not of her own attractions ; and evil 
as are the ways of men few ever ventured to follow or to 
address her, for the quiet resolution in the earnest face, 
the purpose in the steady walk, told all but the incor- 
rigible snob that she was a women to be respected. No, 
she had never rebelled against Fate. All that she asked 
from life was the power to maintain her father in com- 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


211 


fort, and to prevent his return to those degrading habits 
which had made the misery of her girlhood. 

August was half over, West End London was a desert, 
and still Gerard lingered, Gerard the double millionaire, 
whom all the loveliest spots upon this earth invited to 
take his pleasure at this holiday season. His friends had 
bored him insufferably with their questions and sugges- 
tions before they set out upon their own summer pilgrim- 
ages. Those mysteriously fluctuating diseases of which 
one only hears at the end of the season had driven their 
victinis in various directions, sympathetically crowding to 
the same springs, and sunning themselves in the same 
gardens. The army of martyrs to eczema and gout were 
boring themselves insufterably in Auvergne — the rheu- 
matics were in Germany — the weak chests and shattered 
nerves were playing tennis or toboganning at St. Moritz 
— the shooting men were in Scotland, the fishermen were 
in Norway. The idlers, who want only to wear fine 
clothes, do a little baccarat, and dabble in summer wave- 
lets, were at Trouville, Etretat, Parame, Dinard or 
Dieppe. For any man deliberately to stay in London 
after the twelfth, was an act so perverse and monstrous 
that he must needs find some excuse for it in his own 
mind. Gerard’s excuse was that he was not a sportsman, 
had shot all the grouse he ever wanted to shoot, that he 
had seen all of the Continent that he cared to see, and 
that he felt himself hardly strong enough for travelling. 
The perfect tranquillity of his own house, uninvaded by 
visitors, pleased him better than the finest hotel in 
Europe, the marble staircases and fiower gardens of the 
grand Bretagne at Delaggio, or the feverish va-etvient of 
the Comfortable Schweitzerhof at Lucerne. He wanted 
rest, and he got it in his own rooms where his every 
caprice and idiosyncrasy found its expression in his sur- 
roundings. 

Why should he leave London ? He had invitations 
enough to have made a small octavo volume if he had 


212 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 


cared to bind and perpetuate that evidence of the 
worship which Society offers to Mammon, invitations 
worded in every form and phrase that can tempt 
mans vanity or minister to his self esteem. Invita- 
tions to Castles in Scotland, to moated granges in 
Warwickshire, to manor houses and shooting boxes in 
Yorkshire — to the wolds and moors of the north, to Dart- 
moor and Exmoor, to Connemara and Kerry, to every 
point of the compass in the British Isles, and even to 
chateaux in France, and hunting lodges in Servia, Bohemia, 
Hungary, and heaven kno\ys where. And every one of 
these invitations, many of them backed with playful allu- 
sions to daughters who for this or the other of his various 
accomplishments — tennis, chess, music, sketching — were 
especialty eager for his society, every one of these invi- 
tations he knew was addressed not to himself but to his 
millions. This adulation filled him with unspeakable 
scorn ; nor if the invitations had been prompted by the 
most genuine friendlines would he have accepted one of 
them. Why should he fall in with other people’s habits, 
or share in pleasures not originated by himself, he who 
could live his own life — carry his own retinue with him 
wherever he cared to go — charter the finest yacht that 
had ever been launched — hire the most luxurious of shoot- 
ing boxes, castles, or chateaux — and take existence at 
his own measure, knowing no ruler tut the caprice of 
the hour. 

His answer to all these hospitable offers was a polite 
refusal. His health was too precarious to permit his en- 
joyment of visits which would otherwise be most agree- 
able. These refusals were written by his secretary and 
elicited much comment upon the insolence and presump- 
tion of the newly rich, and from the masculine recipients 
some unfriendly allusions to beggars on horseback. 

Thus August drew towards a sultry close and the news- 
papers, no longer absorbed by Parliamentary reports, 
dressed themselves in the feathers of the screech owl and 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 


213 


devoted a daily column to cholera, while the livelier and 
more discursive papers took up some topic of the hour, 
serial or domestic , and opened their pages to a procession 
of letters upon the thrilling question of what we shall do 
with our empty sardine tins, or is the stage a safe pro- 
fession for clergymen’s daughters, or how to enjoy three 
weeks’ holiday for a five pound note. If Gerard Hill- 
ersdon had no longing for change from arid and over- 
baked streets he was perhaps the only person in town 
whose thoughts did not turn with fond longing towards 
shadowy vales and running streams, towards mountain or 
seashore. Even IlBster’s resigned temper was stirred by 
this natural longing. ‘ How lovely it must be up the 
river in this weather,’ she said one evening when Gerard 
was strolling by her side under the trees of Cheyne Walk. 
Her father was with them. In all Gerard’s visits he had 
never found her alone — not once had they two talked to- 
gether without a listener, not once had their eyes met 
without the witness of other eyes. A passionate longing 
sometimes seized him as they paced soberly up and down 
in the summer moonlight, a longing to be alone with her, 
to hold her hands, to look into her eyes, and reach the 
secrets of her heart with ruthless questioning — but never 
yet had that desire been gratified. Once on a sudden 
impulse he went to Wilmot-streetin the afternoon, know- 
ing her father often spent an hour or two before dinner 
at the Free Library, but the landlady who opened the 
door told him that Miss Davenport was at her work, and 
must on no account be disturbed, 

‘ You can at least tell her that I am here, and would 
be glad to see her, if only for a few minutes,’ said Gerard, 
and as he had given the woman more than one handsome 
douceur, she went into the parlour and gave his message. 

She returned almost immediately to say that Miss 
Davenport was engaged upon work that had to be finished 
that afternoon, and she could not leave her sewing ma- 
chine. 


214 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devih 


The sound of the hated wheel was audible while the 
woman delivered her message, and Gerard left the thres- 
hold angry with Fate and life — angry even with the girl 
who had denied herself to him. 

‘ It is pride, obstinacy, heartlessness,’ he told himself, 
in the bitterness of his disappointment. ' She knows 
that I adore her — that I can make her life one longsuiri- 
■mer holiday ; that I hold the master-key to all the world 
contains of beauty or of pleasure, and yet she goes on 
grinding that odious wheel. She would rather be the 
drudge of a German tailor than the delight and ruler of 
my life.’ 

It was w hile he was in this embittered state of mind 
that he found himself face to face with Justin Jermyn, 
only a few paces from Mr. Davenport’s door. 

‘I thought you were in the Black Forest/ he said, an- 
noyed at the encounter. 

‘ I have been there — have tramped with my knapsack 
on my back, like a student from Heidelberg or Gottingen, 
have drunk the cup of pleasure at roadside inns, dozed 
through a long summer day and dreamt of Mephisto and 
the witches on the Brocken. But one day a fancy seized 
me to come back to London and hunt you up. I heard 
from Roger Larose that you had turned hermit, and were 
living secluded in the house he built for you — and I, 
who am something of the hermit myself, felt myself 
drawn to you by sympathy. Was that Gretchen’s wheel 
I heard just now, as I passed the house where you were 
calling ? ’ 

• I have no idea what you may have heard, but I should 
like to know what brings you to this particular neigh- 
bourhood.’ 

^ Curiosity and a fast hansom. I saw you driving this 
way as I stood waiting to cross the road at Albert gate, 
with the intention of calling upon you. Useless to go to 
your house when you were driving away from it, so I 
hailed a hansom, and told the driver to keep yours in 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil 215 


view without too obviously following you — and so the 
man drove me to the corner of this street, where I alighted 
from my hansom just as you dismissed yours. I passed 
the house yonder on the opposite side of the way while 
you were talking to the landlady, who took her own time 
in opening the door. Y ou were too much absorbed to 
notice me as I went by, and through the open window I 
saw a girl working at a sewing machine — a pale, proud 
face, which flashed crimson when the woman announced 
your visit.’ 

‘And you expect me to submit to the insolence of this 
espionage. Whatever your gifts may be, Mr. Jermyn, 
whether you excel most as a prophet, necromancer, or a 
})rivate detective, I must beg you to exercise your talents 
upon other subjects, and to give me a wide berth.’ 

Justin Jermyn responded to this reproof with a hearty 
laugh. ‘Nonsense,’ he said, ‘you pretend to be angry, 
but you are not in earnest. Nobody is ever angry with 
me. I am a privileged offender. I am everybody’s jester. 
Let me be your fool. Give me the privileges that Emper- 
ors of old gave to their jesters. You will find me at worst 
a better companion than your own thoughts.’ 

‘ They are gloomy enough at the present moment,’ said 
Gerard, subjugated at once by that unknown influence 
which he had never been strong enough to resist. 

He knew not what the force was by which this young 
man mastered him, but he knew that the mastery was 
complete, lie was as Justin Jermyn chose — to be bent 
this way or that. 

‘You are unhappy,’ cried Jermyn. ‘ You, with the one 
lever which can move the world under your hand. Ab- 
surd. If you have wishes, realise them. If any man 
stands in the way of your desire, buy him. All men are 
to be bought — that is an old axiom of Prime Ministers — 
from Wolsey to Walpole — and almost all women. You 
are a fool to waste yourself upon unfulfilled desires, which 
mean fever and unrest. You have the Peau de Chagrin 
- — the talisman of power in your banking account.’ 


216 The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil. 


' Yes, the Peau de Chagrin— we may take it as an alle- 
gorical figure to represent the power of money in an age 
of advanced civilization — but while I possess the power I 
have to remember the penalty. With every passionate 
desire fulfilled the talisman shrinks, and the possessors 
life dwindles/ 

"'No, my friend, it is our unfulfilled desires that shorten 
our lives — our ambitions never realised — our hopeless 
loves. With realisation comes satiety, and satiety means 
rest. The peril lies in the passionate wish, not in its 
fruition.’ 


CHAPTER XIV. 

A MAN CAN HAVE BUT ONE LIFE AND ONE DEATH.” 

F all the men he knew, Justin Jermyn was the 
last whom Gerard would have deliberately 
chosen for a confidant and counsellor. He had 
an innate dread of the man, thought him false, 
tricky, and uncanny, half a charlatan, and hall 
a fiend ; and yet he was drawn towards the man 
by such an irresistible magnetism, and was at this 
time so sorely in need of some friendly ear into which 
his egotism could pour its complainings, that after trying' 
to shake off Jermyn by absolute incivility, he ended by 
walking as far as Barnes Common with him, where they 
sat on a furzy hillock in the sweltering August after- 
noon, and talked in a desultory fashion between their 
cigars. 

So far they talked only of people who were indifferent 
to both. Jermyn had a scathing tongue about men and 
women — but, being a man, was naturally most malignant 
in his estimate of the weaker sex. 



The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 217 


‘ I believe the generality of men hate all women except 
the one woman they adore/ said Gerard, meditatively. 
‘ There is a natural antagonism in the sexes as between 
dog and cat. Turn a little girl loose into a playground of 
small boys, and if it were not for fear of the schoolmaster, 
there would he no more of her after an hour’s play than 
of Jezebel when the dogs ate her. Every boy’s hand 
would be against her. They would begin by pulling her 
hair and tripping her up, and then the natural savage in 
them would go on to murder. Look at the way the 
Sepoys treated women in the Indian Mutiny ! That 
devilish cruelty was only the innate hatred of the sex 
which asserted itself at the first opportunity. And your 
talk about Mrs. Fousenelle and the pretty Miss Vincent 
is only the civilised development of the same natural 
malignity.’ 

‘ Perhaps,’ agreed Jermyn. ' But for my own part I am 
rather fond of women in the aggregate, as entomologists 
are fond of butterflies. I like them as specimens. I 
like to pin them down upon cork and study them, and 
make my guesses about their future, by the light of their 
antecedents.’ 

‘ And you do not believe in the unassailable honour of 
good women ? ’ 

‘ Not in honour for honour’s sake. There are women 
who elect to go through life with an unspotted reputation, 
for pride’s sake, just as an Indian fanatic will hold his 
arms above his head until they wither and stiffen, for 
the sake of being looked up to by his fellowmen. But 
honour for honour’s sake, honour in a hovel where there 
is no one to praise — honour in the Court of a Louis the 
Great or a Charles the Little — that kind of honour, my 
dear Hillersdon, is beyond my belief. Remem'ber I am 
of the world, worldly. My Intellect and my opinions are 
perhaps the natural product of a society in its decadence.’ 

"And do you think that a good woman — a woman 
whose girlhood has been fed upon all pure and holy 


218 The Worldy The Fleshy and The Devil. 

thoughts, whose chosen type of her sex is the mother of 
Christ, do you think that such a woman can survive the 
loss of reputation, and yet be happy ? ' 

"Assuredly, if she gets a fair equivalent — a devoted 
lover, or a life of luxury, with a provision for her old age. 
The thorn among the roses of vice is not the loss of 
honour, but the apprehension of poverty. Anonyma, 
lolling on the silken cushions of her victoria, shivers at 
the thought that all the luxuries which surround her may 
be as short-lived as the flowers in the park borders, for a 
season, and no more. Believe me, my dear Hillersdon, 
v/e waste our pity upon these ladies when we picture 
them haunted by sad memories of an innocent girlhood, 
of their parish church, the school-house where they 
taught the village children on Sunday mornings, of 
broken-hearted parents, or sorrowing sisters. Ways and 
means are what these butterflies think about when their 
thoughts travel beyond the enjoyment of the hour. The 
clever ones contrive to save a competence, or to marry 
wealth. The stupid ones have their day, and then drift 
to the gutter. But conscience — regrets — broken-hearts ! 
Dreams, my dear Hillersdon, idle dreams.’ 

A chance hansom took the two young men back to 
town, and on nearing Queen s gate Gerard invited his 
companion to dine with him. There was nothing new or 
striking in Justin Jermyns discourse, but its cheap cynic- 
ism suited Gerard’s humour. When a man is set upon 
evil nothing pleases him better than to be told that evil 
is the staple of life, that the wickedness which tempts him 
is common to humanity itself, and cannot be wicked be- 
cause it is incidental to human nature. 

They dined tSte-^ t^te in the winter garden, where the 
summer air rustled among the palm leaves, and the at- 
r.osphere was full of the scent of roses, climbing roses, 
standards, bushes, which filled all the available space, 
and made the vast conservatory a garden of roses. The 
sliding windows in the lofty dome were opened, and 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


219 


snowed a sky, starlit, profound, and purple as if this 
winter garden near Knightsbridge had been some palm 
grove in one of the South Sea Isles. The dinner was 
perfection, the wines the choicest products of royal vine- 
yards ; and Hillersdon’s guest did ample justice to both 
cuisine and celler, while Hillersdon himself, ate very 
little, and drank only soda-water. 

‘ Fortune which has favoured you so highly in some re- 
spects has not given you a good appetite,' said Jermyn, 
when he bad gone steadily through the menu, and had 
eyen insisted upon a second supply of a certain chaud- 
froid of ortolans. 

‘ There is such a terrible sameness in food and wines, 
answered Gerard. ' I believe my chef is an artist who 
really deserves the eminence he enjoyed with former 
masters — but his productions weary me. Their variety 
is more in name than in substance. Yesterday quail;^, 
to-day ortolans, to-morrow grouse. And if I live till 
next year the quails and ortolans and grouse will come 
around again. The earliest salmon will blush upon my 
table in January ; February will come with her hands full 
of hot-house peaches and Algerian peas; March will offer 
me sour strawberries and immature lamb. The same — 
the same over and over again. The duckling of May — 
the green-goose, the turkey poult, the chicken- turbot. I 
know them all. There is truer relish in a red herring 
which a working-man carries home to eat with his tea 
than in all the resources of a French cook, when once we 
have run through his gamut of delicacies. I remember 
my first Greenwich dinner — rapture — the little room 
over-looking the river, the open windows and evening 
sunlight, the whitebait, the flounder souche, the sweet- 
breads, and iced moselle, food for the Olympian gods — 
but after many seasons of Greenwich dinners how wearied 
and hackneyed is the feast.' 

‘You have possessed your millions little more than a 
year, and already you have learnt how not to enjoy,' said 
Jermyn. ‘I congratulate you upon your progress.' 


220 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘ Ah, you forget, I knew all these things before I had 
my fortune — knew them in the days when I was only an 
umbra, knew them in other people’s houses. Money can 
buy hardly anything for me that has freshness or novelty, 
any more than it could for Solomon, and I have no Queen 
of Sheba to envy me my splendour until there was no 
more spirit in her. Nobody envies a millionaire his 
wealth nowadays. Millionaires are too common. They live 
in every street in Mayfair, To be worth anybody’s envy 
a man should have a billion.’ 

‘ You begin to find fault with the mediocrity of your 
fortune ?’ said Jermyn, with his pleasant laugh at human 
folly. ‘A little more than a year ago you were going to 
destroy yourself because you were in pecuniary difficul- 
ties — persecuted by tailors and bootmakers. In another 
year you will be charging the same revolver to end an 
existence that leaves you nothing to live for. Solomon 
was not so foolish. Indeed I think that great king was 
simply the most magnificent sham that the history of the 
world offers to the contemplation of modern thinkei’s, a 
man who could philosophise so exquisitely upon the van- 
ity of human life, and yet drain the cup of earthly pleas- 
ures — sensual, artistic, intellectual — to the very dregs I 
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; and, behold ! the 
slave market sends its choicest beauties to the king. 
Vanity of vanities, and, lo ! his ships come into port laden 
with apes and ivory, with Tj^rean purple and the gold of 
Ophir, for the king; and the building of the mighty 
temple yonder on the holy hill affords a perpetual interest 
and an inexhaustible plaything for the man who calls the 
grasshopper a burden. I’ll wager, that in Jerusalem 
they called that gorgeous temple Solomon’s Folly, and 
laughed among themselves as the great king’s litter went 
up the hill, with veiled beauty sitting in the shadow of 
the purple curtains, and little slippered feet just peeping 
out among th« jewel-spangled cushions. Solomon in all 
bis glory ! I think, Hibersdon, if I were as rich as you, the 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 221 


thing I should feel most keenly would be that my money 
could not buy me back one glimpse of the glory of the 
past — not half an hour with the guerilla leader David, 
among the wild hills, not one glimpse of Jerusalem when 
Solomon was king, not a night with Dido, nor a dinner 
with Lucullus. We may imitate that gorgeous past, but 
we can never recall it. Billions would not buy it back 
for us. All the colour and glory of life has faded from 
an earth that is vulgarized by cheap trippers. From 
Hounslow to the Holy Land one hears the same harsh, 
common voices. German and Yankee accents drown the 
soft Tuscan of the Florentine in the Via Tornabuoni, 
tram loads of cockneys rush up and down the hills of 
Algeria, camel loads of vulgarity from London and New 
York pervade the desert where Isaiah wandered alone 
beneath the stars. The hill where the worshippers of Baal 
waited for a sign from their god, the Valley of Jehosa- 
j)hat, are as banal as Shooters Hill or the Vale of Health. 
The spirit of romance has fled from our vulgarized planet, 
and not a million of golden sovereigns could tempt her 
back for an hour ! ' 

T should be content to let the past go, if I could be 
happy in tlie present. That is the difficulty.’ 

‘Oh, I am always happy. I have fancies, but no pas- 
sionate longings. My only troubles are climate. If I can 
follow the sunshine I am content/ 

‘If you have flnished your wine let us go to my den,’ 
said Gerard, who had allowed his companion’s rodomon- 
tade to pass b}^ him like the faint breath of evening wind 
among the palm leaves, while his own thoughts travelled 
in a circle. ‘ We can’t talk freely here. I feel as if there 
were listeners in the shadowy corners behind those tree 
ferns.’ 

‘ To your den with all my heart.’ 

They went upstairs to the room where Gerard’s test of 
power was flxed against the wall, an old Italian vestment 
of richest embroidery, with jewels imbedded in the tar- 


222 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


nished gold thread, hung in front of that eccentric talis- 
man. He had not looked at it since the night when he 
first met Hester Davenport, and when the tremulous line 
which his pen made upon the paper showed him that a 
disturbing element had entered into his life. 

To-night he flung himself into his accustomed chair 
wearily, and a heavy sigh escaped him, as he pushed aside 
the books upon the table in front of him, and looked at 
the splendid face of his betrothed in the photograph. 

J ermyn was walking round the room looking at every- 
thing with an amused air. 

‘So like my old rooms/ he said, ‘ I feel quite snug as I 
look at the things. Mine are sold, dispersed, vanished 
into thin air. I gave up those old inn chambers — too un- 
canny for a man of cheerful temperament. I have a 
pied h terre in Paris now, my only settlement/ 

‘What part of Paris ? ’ 

‘Ah, 1 never tell my address. That is one of my 
idiosyncrasies. But if ever I meet you on the boulevard 
after the theatres have closed, I will take you to my den 
to supper, and will give you Margot or Lefl to equal 
the Maderia which you liked that night in the old inn. 
By Jove, my image in bronze. How did you come by it ? ’ 

The image was a bust of Pan, and the features and 
expression of the god were the features and expression 
of Justin Jermyn. Allow for the phantasy of goat's ears 
and the bust was as fine a likeness of the Fate-reader as 
portraiture could have achieved under the happiest con- 
ditions. 

‘ Who is the sculptor?' asked Jermyn, hovering over 
the image with childish pleasure. 

‘It is an antique from Sir Humphrey Squander videos 
collection. I found it at Christie's the other day, and I 
bought it as the best substitute I could get for that black 
marble bust which I saw in your rooms/ 

" You must be very fond of me, Hillersdon, to have set 
up my image in yonr sanctum.' 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


223 


‘ Fond of you ! Not in the least. I have a horror of 
you — but I like your society, as a man likes opium. It 
has a foul taste, and he knows it is bad for him ; yet he 
takes it — craves for it — must have it. I could not rest 
till I had your likeness ; and now that grinning mouth of 
yours is always there to mock at my heart ache, my 
doubt, my despair. That broad smile of sensual enjoy- 
ment, that rapture in mere animal life, serve me as a per- 
petual reminder of what a poor creature I am from the 
heathen point of view — how utterly unable to enjoy life 
from the Pantheist’s standpoint, how conscious of man’s 
universal heritage — death.’ 

‘ Death is here and death is there, 

Death is busy everywhere.’ ” 

quoted Jermyn. 'Cheerful poet, Shelley, an excellent 
harper, but a good deal of his harping was upon one 
string — death, dust, annihilation. It would have been 
very inconsistent if he had lived to be as old as Words- 
worth. But why should my image,’ posing himself be- 
side the bronze bust, and laying his long, white hand 
affectionately upon the sylvan god’s forehead, ' remind 
you of dismal things ? My prototype and I have the 
spirit which makes for cheerfulness ? ’ 

'Your very cheerfulness accentuates my own gloom.’ 

'Gloomy! With youth and good looks, and ninety 
thousand a year.’ 

' More than enough for happiness, perhaps, if I had the 
freehold ; but I am only a leaseholder, and I know not 
how short my lease may be. I have pretty good reason 
to know that it is not along one. Yes, I know that, Jus- 
tin Jermyn. I know that these things belong to me as 
the dream-palace belongs to the dreamer who fancies 
himself a king.’ 

' Make the most of your opportunities while they last. 
To be as rich as you are — and to be young — is to com- 
mand the world. There is not a flower in the garden 
of this world that you cannot pluck,’ 


224 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘ You are wrong. I am tied and hampered. I see be- 
fore me one — and only one — chance of supreme happiness, 
and yet I dare not grasp it.’ 

And then in a gush of confidence, in the passionate 
egotism that must talk of self, he told this man whom 
he distrusted, the inmost secrets of his heart — told him 
how he had been moved by the sight of Hester’s face on 
the platform in the concert hall, and how from that night 
he had struggled in vain against the attraction which 
drew him towards her. He told Jermyn everything — 
his intrusion upon her life, albeit he knew her desire to 
avoid all intercourse with friends of the past — told of 
those quiet hours in the humble lodging, those unalarming 
gifts of flowers and books — told of those slow pacings 
to and fro by the river, with the old father always at 
her side — pouring out his soul to this man whom he 
doubted and feared as a girl tells her story of hopeless 
love to a trusted sister. 

‘ We have never been alone together since that first 
night in Eton Square. I have never dared even to hold 
her hand in mine with a lingering clasp, and yet when 
our hands touch there is a fire that runs through my veins, 
till heart and brain are fused in that passionate tire, and 
I can scarce shape the words that bid her good-bye. Our 
talk has been only of commonest things. I have never 
by look or word dared to express my love — and yet I 
think she knows I love her. I think that when my heart 
leaps at the sound of her voice or the touch of her hand 
her heart is not silent. I have seen her lips tremble in 
the faint evening light when we have walked side by side 
under the trees. I have felt that there was eloquence in 
her silence, in her faltering replies. Yes, I know she 
loves me.’ 

‘ What more do you want — knowing that ? Are you 
going to leave her at her sewing-machine when you can 
make her life one blissful holiday ? ’ 

‘ She is not a woman to be had for the asking. Would 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 225 


you advise me to fling every consideration except happi- 
ness to the winds, and marry her ? ' 

‘ You cannot marry everybody,' replied Jermyn, with a 
practical air, ‘ and I take it you are irrevocably pledged 
to the lady yonder,' pointing to the stately form of the 
gold and lapis lazuli frame — a gem of jeweller's work — on 
the table. 

‘Yes, I am pledged to her.' 

‘In any case the world expects you to marry her — and 
it will go rather hard with her — from a society point of 
view, if you don't. But perhaps you care very little what 
the world says about Mrs. Champion ? ' 

‘ T care very much. I am bound to care for her reputa- 
tion, and for her feelings. Till she, of her own free will, 
releases me, I am bound to her, by every tie that can bind 
a man of honour.' 

‘Sol' exclaimed J ermyn, ‘ that means a good deal.' 

‘It means not one syllable to Edith Champion's dis- 
credit,' answered Hillersdon, hotly. ‘ She was a faithful 
wife to her husband, and I knew how to respect her po- 
sition as his wife, although I had been her adoring lover. 
In the three years of her married life we were friends, 
and friends only. It may be that we both counted on 
the days when she would be free, and when the thread of 
the old story might be taken up again just where we 
dropped it.' 

‘ And now she is free, and you seem hardly to have ta- 
ken up the thread.' 

‘ It is her fault,' said Hillersdon, angrily. ‘ Her fault. 
She is beautiful, generous, loves me with all her heart, 
but she is bound and fettered by petty laws which brave 
women laugh at. She ran away from me just when my 
salvation lay in her society. I wanted to hold fast by 
my first love. I wanted to live all my life in her com- 
panj^, to lure back the old loves and graces that had flut- 
tered away, to forget that there was another lovely or 
lovable woman upon this earth; but she told me that 


226 The Worldy The Fleshy and The Devil. 


people would talk, and that it was better we should see 
very little of each other until the period of conventional 
grief was passed, and I could decently make David 
Champion s widow my wife. So she is sketching snow 
peaks at Murren while 

‘ While you are over head and ears in love with Hester 
Davenport.’ 

It is more than love : it is possession. My world be- 
gins and ends with her. I tried to run away, tried to 
start for Switzerland, to follow my betrothed to her 
mountain retreat, in defiance of her objection; but it was 
a futile effort. I was at the station ; my man and my 
j^ortmanteau were on the platform ; and at the last mo- 
ment my resolution failed. I could not place myself be- 
yond the possibility of seeing the face I worship, of hear- 
ing the voice that thrills me.’ 

‘ And you are content to go on seeing the lovely face 
and hearing the thrilling voice in the presence of a third 
person ? Isn’t that rather like being in love with a 
ward in Chancery, and courting her in the presence of 
the family lawyer ? Why don’t you get rid of the old 
man ? ’ 

‘ That’s not as eas^” as you suppose. You saw me sent 
away from her door to-day. She will not receive me in 
her father’s absence, and I am not such a cad as to force 
myself upon her seclusion. I behaved badly enough in 
the first instance when I acted in direct opposition to her 
wish.’ 

‘ To her alleged wish. Do you think a woman is ever 
quite candid in these cases, either to her lover or to her- 
self ? Look at Goethe’s Gretchen,for instance, somewhat 
snappish, when Faust addresses her in the street, but a 
few hours after, in the garden! What had become of the 
snappishness ? She is ocean deep in love, ready to throw 
herself into the lover’s arms. I can’t conceive how you 
can have gone on with this idle trifiing, like an under- 
graduate in love with a boarding school miss. You with 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


227 


your millions, your short lease of life, your passionate de- 
sire to make the most of a few golden years. Strange to 
what hopeless fatuity love can reduce its victim. Get rid 
of the old father, make a clean sweep of him, and then at 
least the coast will be clear, and you need not confine 
your love-making to half-an-hour s crawl upon the em- 
bankment.’ 

‘How get rid of him? There’s the difficulty. He has 
been reformed by her patient care, and it is the business 
of her life to make his declining years happy. Nothing 
would induce her to part with him.’ 

' Perhaps not; but very little would induce him to part 
with her. Do you suppose that he is not tired of his pre- 
sent life ? Do you know what reform means in the 
habitual drunkard? It means deprivation that makes 
existence a living death. It means a perpetual craving, 
a thrist as fierce as that which racks the parched traveller 
in the African desert, the perishing sailor after a week 
scorched upon a raft in mid-ocean, only it is the thirst 
for alcohol, for fire instead of water. To his daughter 
this poor wretch may pretend resignation, but you may 
be sure ha is miserable, and will resume his darling vice 
at the first opportunity.’ 

‘ And you would suggest that I should find the oppor- 
tunity, that I should fling him back into the Tophet from 
which his daughter has plucked him. No, Jermyn, I am 
not so vile as that.’ 

‘ I suggest nothing. Only if you want to win the 
daughter you must get the father out of the way; unless, 
indeed, you prefer to take the other line — throw over 
Mrs. Champion and make a formal offer for Miss Daven- 
port’s hand. No doubt the old man would be very proud 
of you as a son-in-law, though you might have some 
occasion to be ashamed of him as a father-in-law, when 
the opportunities of an establishment like this should 
lure him back to his old habits.’ 

‘ I have told you that I cannot break with Edith.’ 


228 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘ And you will marry her next year while you, are still 
passionately in love with another woman ? ’ 

‘ I dare not think of next year. I may not live till 
next year. I can think only of the present, and of the 
woman I love.’ 

‘ You are wise. A year is a long time, measured by a 
passion like yours. You have offered Davenport and his 
daughter an income through your sister ; you have acted 
with most admirable delicacy, and yet your offers have 
been rejected. Have you ever offered Davenport money, 
directly — with the golden sovereigns or the crisp bank 
notes in your hand ? ’ 

‘Never. I would not degrade him by any such offer. 
And I believe that he would reject any gift of that kind.’ 

‘ A gift perhaps, but not a loan. A man of that kind 
will always take your money if you humour his pride by 
pretending to lend it to him. Or there are other ways. 
He is a good classic, yon say, or was so once. Let him 
write a book for you. A literary commission would be 
an excuse for giving him ample means for enjoying his 
evenings in his own way, and then your moonlit walks 
upon the Embankment would have the charm which such 
walks have when heart answers to heart.’ 

‘ What a villain I should be if I were to take your 
advice and undo the work to which that heroic girl has 
devoted herself for the brightest years of her girlhood 
— those years which for the young lady in society mean 
a triumphant progress of dances and tennis tournaments, 
and pretty frocks and adulation — a pathway of flowers. 
She has given all the brightness of her j^outh to this one 
holy aim, and you would have me undo her work.’ 

‘ My dear fellow, the end is inevitable. I tell you that 
for the habitual drunkard there is no such thing as re- 
formation. There is semblance of it, while the sinner is 
cut off‘ from the possibility of sin ; but backsliding comes 
with opportunity, and the reaction is so much the more 
violent because of that slow agony of deprivation through 


The World, The Flesh, and The hevil. 


229 


which the sinner has been passing. I no more believe 
in Mr. Davenport’s reform than the Broad Church believes 
that Joshua stopped the sun.’ 

The conversation drifted into other channels. They 
discussed that great problem of man’s destiny which is 
always being argued in some form or other. They asked 
each other that universal riddle which is always being 
answered and is yet unanswerable. In this line of argu- 
ment Justin Jermyn showed an impish facility for shift- 
ing his ground ; and at the end of an hour’s argument 
Hillersdon hardly knew whether he was full of vague 
aspirations and vague beliefs in purer and better worlds 
beyond this insignificant planet, or whether his creed 
was blank negation. 

It was late when they parted, and after the man was 
gone Gerard Hillersdon sat for a long time face to face 
with the bronze Pan, the sly smile, the curious sidelong 
glance of the long, narrow eyes seeming to carry on the 
argument, which the living lips had dropped, to strange 
and wicked conclusions. 

‘ Wealth without limit,’ mused Gerard, ‘ and so little 
power to enjoy — so brief a lease of life. Why if I were 
sure of living to eighty or ninety I should still think it 
hard that the end must come — that it is inevitable — fore- 
shadowed in the freshness of life’s morning; stealing 
nearer and nearer with the ripening noon ; and, oh, the 
blackness of life’s evening, when the last sun-rays light 
an open grave. Oh, that inevitable end — poison and bane 
of every life, but most hideous where wealth makes 
existence a kind of royalty. I shudder when I read the 
wills of triple or quadruple millionaires. The wealth re- 
mains — a long array of figures, astounding in their mag- 
nitude — and the man who owned it is lying in the dark, 
and knows the end of all things.’ 

He went over to the wall against which he had affixed 
his talisman, drew aside the curtain, and then stepped 
quickly back to the table and dipped his pen in the ink. 


230 The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil, 


It was the same large, broad-nibbed pen with which he 
had drawn the last line upon the night after his inter- 
view with Hester Davenport. He dashed his pen upon 
the paper in a fury, and drew an inner line with one hur- 
ried sweep of his wrist. If determination could have 
assured firmness that line would have been bold and 
strong as an outline by Michael Angelo ; but the tracing 
was even more wavering than the last, and might have 
been the effort of a sick man, so feebly did the line falter 
from point to point. 

‘Dr. South and Justin Jermyn are right,' thought Ger- 
ard. ‘ It is passionate feeling that saps the life of a man 
— most of all a hopeless passion — most of all a struggle 
between honour and inclination. I will see South to- 
morrow, and if he tells me the shadows are deepening 
upon the dial — if — ' 

The sentence remained unfinished even in his own. 
mind. He spent a restless night, broken by brief slum- 
bers and long dreams — vivid dreams in which he was 
haunted by the image of Nicholas Davenport, under every 
strange and degrading aspect. In one dream he was in 
his father s church at even song in the quiet summer even- 
ing. He heard the organ and the voices of the village 
choir in the closing phrases of his mother s favourite 
hymn, “ Abide with me," and amidst the hush that fol- 
lowed the Amen he saw Nicholas Davenport lolling over 
the worn velvet cushions of the old-fashioned pulpit, ges- 
ticulating dumbly, mad with drink, but voiceless. There 
was no sound in the church after that tender closing 
phrase of the hymn. All that followed was silence ; but 
as he looked at that degraded figure leaning out of the 
pulpit the church changed to a pit of hell, and the village 
congregation became an assembly of devils, and on the 
steps of Satan's throne stood a figure like Goethe’s 
Mephistopheles, and the face under the little red cap with 
the cock's feather was the face of Justin Jermyn. 

There was nothing strange in the fact that he should 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 231 


so dream, for he had long ago in his own mind likened 
the Fate-reader to Goethe's fiend. 

Gerard Hillersdon drove to Harley-street before ten 
o'clock next morning, and was lucky in catching Dr. 
South, who was in London, en passant, having finished 
his own cure, and advised his gouty patients at Homberg, 
and being on the point of starting for a holiday at Braemar, 

There were no patients in the waiting-room, as the 
doctor was supposed to be out of town, and on sending 
in his card Hillersdon was at once admitted to the con- 
sulting-room. 

Dr. South looked up from his pile of newly-opened 
letters with a pleasant smile. 

‘ My little patient of the Devonshire Rectory/ he said, 
cheerily ; and then with a keen look and a changed tone, 
he said, ‘ But how is this, Mr. Hillersdon, you are not 
looking so well as when 5 mu were here last. I'm afraid 
you have been disregarding my advice ! ' 

' Perhaps I have/ Gerard answered, gloomily. ^ You 
told me that in order to spin out the thin thread of my 
life I must venture only to exist, I must teach myself to 
become a human vegetable, without passions or emotions, 
thought or desire.' 

‘ I did not forbid thought or pleasant emotions,’ said 
Dr. South ; ‘ I only urged you to avoid those stormy pas- 
sions which strain the cordage of the human vessel, and 
sometimes wreck her.' 

‘You urged that which is impossible. To live is to feel 
and to suffer. I have not been able to obey you. I am 
passionately in love with a lady whom I cannot marry.' 

‘ You mean that the lady is married already ? ' 

‘No; but there are other reasons ' 

‘ If it is a question of social inequality, waive it, and 
marry. You capnot afford to be unhappy. The disap- 
pointment which another man might get over in a year, 
might in your case have a fatal effect. You are not of 
the temper which can live down trouble/ 


232 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘Tell me, frankly and ruthlessly, how long I have to 
live/ 

‘ Take off your coat and waistcoat,’ said the doctor, 
quietly, and then, as his patient obeyed, he said, ‘I 
should be an impudent empiric if I pretended to measure 
the sands in the glass of life, but I can, if you like, tell you 
if your chances now are any worse than they were when 
you were with me last year. I remember your case per- 
fectly, and even what I said to you at that time. I was 
especially interested in you as one of my little patients who 
had faith enough to come back to me in manhood. Now 
let me see,’ and the thoughtful head was bent to listen 
to that terrible tell-tale machinery which we all carry 
about with us, ticking off the hours that remain to each 
of us in this poor sum of life. The downward bent brow 
was unseen by the patient, or he might have read his 
doom in the physician s countenance. When Dr. South 
looked up, his features wore only the studied gravity of 
the professional aspect. 

‘ Well/ questioned Hillersdon, when the auscultation 
was finished, ‘ am I much worse than when I was here 
last ? ’ 

‘ You are not any better.’ 

‘ Speak out, for God’s sake,’ cried Gerard, roughly. ‘ I 
— I beg your pardon, doctor, but I want the truth, the 
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, no making the 
best of a bad case. What is the outlook ? ’ 

‘Bad/ 

‘ Shall I live a year — two — three years ? How much 
do you give me ? ’ 

‘ With care — extreme care — you may live some years 
yet. Nay, I do not say that you might not last ten years, 
but if you are reckless the end may come in a year. 
Worry, agitation, fretting of any kind may hasten your 
doom. I am sorry to be obliged to tell you this/ 

‘ I thank you for having told me the truth. It settles 
one question, at least. I shall try to be happy my own 
way.’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 233 


‘ Marry the woman yon love, even if she is a house- 
maid,’ said the doctor, kindly, ‘ and let her make your 
life happy in some quiet retreat, far from the excitements 
and agitations of the world of fashion or politics. You 
will go to the South, of course, before the winter. I 
should recommend Sorrento or Corsica. Your wealth 
will surround you with all the luxuries that make life 
easy wherever a man has to live.’ 


CHAPTER XV. 



'HE IS THE VERY SOUL OF BOUNTY. 

^ERARD HILLERSDON left Harley street 
almost persuaded to break faith with the 
woman he had loved for more than three years, 
and offer himself to the woman he had loved 
less than three months. But that one word 
^almost’ lost the early Christian Church a royal 
convert, and Gerard had not quite made up his 
mind to marry Nicholas Davenport’s daughter. 

‘ So short a lease of life, and were 1 but happy with 
such a wife as Hester I might prolong my span to the 
uttermost,’ he told himself, and then that advocate of 
evil which every worldly man has at his elbow whispered 
‘ Why marry her, when your wealth would enable you to 
make so liberal a settlement that she need never feel the 
disadvantage of a false position. Win her for your mis- 
tress, cherish and hide her from the eye of the world. 
To marry her would be to bring a drunken madman into 
the foreground of your life — to cut off every chance of 
distinction in the few years that may be left to you. A 
man in your position can afford to be faithful to Esthei: 

Q 


234 Tlie Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 


without repudiating Va.shti — and yourYashti has been 
loyal and constant to you. It were a brutal act to break 
your promise to her.’ 

As if to accentuate that evil counsel he found a letter 
from Vashti waiting for him on his study table — a letter 
upon which Vashti’s image was smiling, beautiful in 
court plumes and riviere of diamonds. There was nothing 
new in her letter, but it stabbed him where he was weak- 
est, for the writer dwelt fondly on her trust in him, and 
upon that happy future which they were to lead to- 
gether, 

He dawdled away the summer noontide in his garden, 
smoking and dreaming, and he drove to Rosamond road, 
Chelsea, at the hour when he knew he was likely to find 
Nicholas Davenport alone. His horses and stablemen 
had been having plenty of idleness of late, as he always 
employed a hansom when he went to Chelsea — and the 
inquiry, ‘ would the horses be wanted any more to-day ? ’ 
was generally answered in the negative. 

He found the old man dozing in the armchair, the 
‘ Standard ’ lying across his knees and an empty tumbler 
on the table beside him, which had contained the harm- 
less lemonade with which he now slaked his habitual 
thirst. He looked pale and worn, the mere wreck of a 
man, his silvery hair falling in long loose wisps over the 
high, narrow forehead. There were fresh fiowers in the 
room, and all was exquisitely neat, from the books upon 
the dwarf cupboard to the muslin cover of the sewing 
machine. Gerard seldom entered that room without 
being reminded of Faust s emotion in Gretchen s modest 
chamber — where in the simple maiden s absence, he felt 
her spirit hovering near him, her pure and gentle nature 
expressed in the purity and neatness of her surroundings. 

He had time to glance round him, and to recall that 
scene — Ein kleines, reinliches Zimmer — before Nicholas 
Davenport started up out of his light slumber and shook 
hands with him. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 2o5 


‘ This is uncommonly kind of you/ said the old man. 
These summer afternoons are infernally long when Hester 
is out of the way. And the papers are as dull as ditch- 
water — politicians on the stump all over the country — 
one Parliamentary machine thrashing his bundle of polit- 
ical corn at Leeds on Tuesday, and another machine 
thrashing the very same bundle of facts and fallacies and 
prophecies that never come true at Halifax, and so the 
ball rolls on/ 

' I daresay if we had lived at Athens we should have 
found politics just as great a bore, and orators no less 
windy/ answered Gerard, lightly. ‘ But you are not look- 
ing well, Mr. Davenport.' 

‘I am feeling a little low to-day — the weather, per- 
haps,' and here Mr. Davenport sighed, and began to fold 
up his newspaper with tremulous movements of hands 
that had never recovered the firmness or repose lost under 
the influence of alcohol, ‘ To be candid with you, my 
dear Hillersdon, I am suffering from a profound misap- 
prehension in one of the best of creatures. My daughter 
is an angel. Her devotion to me' — here the ready tears 
stole down the faded cheeks — ‘ is beyond all praise ; but 
she is a woman, and a young woman, and she doesn't 
understand my constitution or the circumstances of my 
life. She has taken up temperance as a craze, and she 
thinks she is doing me a kindness by depriving me of 
every form of stimulant. She hugs herself with the idea 
that she has saved me from destruction, and she cannot 
see that she is reducing me to a state of weakness and 
misery, mental and physical, which must result in imbe- 
cility or death.’ 

He was so earnest, he looked so reduced and wretched 
a being that Gerard was inclined to believe him, and to 
doubt whether Hester's system of absolute deprivation 
might not be a mistake. 

‘ It is hard for you, I daresay, to make so complete a 
change in your habits/ he said doubtfully. 


236 The Worlds The Flesh and The Devil. 


‘ Her mistake is in insisting upon total abstinence. I 
have not forgotten the past, Mr. Hillersdon. I have not for- 
gotten the cruel degradation and disgrace which I brought 
upon myself in your father s church; but that unhappy 
exhibition was the outcome of long months of agony. I 
had been racked by neuralgia, and the only alleviation of 
my pain was the use of chloral or brandy. I have been 
free from neuralgic pain of late. My poor Hester is very 
careful of my diet, full of the tenderest attentions, takes 
the utmost care of my health after her own lights ; but 
she cannot see how weak and depressed I am, she cannot 
understand the mental misery which a glass of sound 
port, twice a day, might cure.* 

‘ Surely Miss Davenport would not object to your tak- 
ing a glass of port after your luncheon and your dinner ? ’ 
‘You don’t know her, my dear friend,* said Daveni)ort, 
shaking his head. ‘ Women are always in extremes. 
She would begin to cry if she saw me with a glass of 
wine in my hand, would go on her knees to ask me not 
to drink it. She has taken it into her head that the least 
indulgence in that line would bring about a return to 
habits of intemperance, which I can assure you were 
never a part of my nature.* 

‘ I must talk to Miss Davenport, and induce her to let 
me send you a few dozen of fine old port. Cockburn’s 
57, for instance.* 

The old man’s eyes gleamed as he heard the offer. 

‘ You may talk to her,’* he said, ‘ but she won’t give way. 
She has made up her mind that my salvation depends 
upon living in her way. It is a hard thing for a man of 
my age to depend for subsistence upon a daughter’s man- 
ual labour, to see a lovely girl wearing out her life at 
vulgar drudgery, and never to have sixpence in my pocket 
— hardly the means of buying a newspaper. She doles 
out her pence, poor child, as if they were sovereigns. 
Women have such narrow notions about money.* 

There was a silence of some minutes, during which 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 287 


Mr. Davenport nearly fell asleep again, and then Gerard 
said quietly : — 

' Why should you depend upon your daughter, even 
for pocket money ? Why should not you do something 
for yourself ? ’ 

‘ What can I do ? I have tried to get copying work, 
but I could not write a clerk’s hand. My penmanship 
was too weak and illegible to be worth even the pittance 
paid for that kind of work/ 

‘ I was not thinking of so poor an occupation. Have 
you tried your hand at literature ? ' 

‘ I have, in more than one line, though I had no voca- 
tion, and wrote slowly and laboriously. The papers I 
sent to the magazines all came back, ‘ Declined with 
thanks.’ My daughter was the poorer by so many quires 
of Bath post and so many postage stamps.’ 

‘ You tried a wrong line, I daresay. Beginners in lit- 
erature generally do. You are a good classic, I know.’ 

‘ I was once, but the man who took his degree at Ox- 
ford thirty years ago is dead and gone.’ 

‘ Men don’t forget their Horace and Virgil when they 
have once loved them with the scholar’s fervour,’ 

‘Forget, no. One does not forget old friends. Quote 
me any line from Horace or Virgil — the most obscure — 
and I will give you the context. Those two poets are 
interwoven with the fabric of my brain. I used also to 
be considered a pretty good critic upon the Greek Dram- 
atists. I once got half way through a translation of 
(Edipus, which some of my contemporaries were flatter- 
ing enough to persuade me to finish. I laid the manu- 
script aside when I began parish work, and heaven knows 
what became of it.’ 

‘The world has grown too frivolous to care for new 
translations of Sophocles,’ replied Gerard, ‘ but I believe 
there is room for a new Horace — that is to say a new ver- 
sion of some of the lighter satires — a version which 
should be for the present epoch what Pope’s was for the 


238 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


time of Queen Anne ; and I feel that it is in me to at- 
tempt the thing if I had the aid of a competent scholar 
— like yourself.’ 

The old man’s face lighted up with feverish eagerness. 

‘ Surely your own Latin — ’ he began tremulously. 

^ Has grown abominably rusty. I want a new version 
of my favourite satires — a verbatim translation, repro- 
ducing the exact text in clear, nervous English, and upon 
that I could work, giving the old lines a modern turn, 
modulating the antique satire into a modern key. Will 
you collaborate with me, Mr. Davenpoi*t ? Will you 
undertake the scholarly portion of the work ? ’ 

at is a task which will delight me. The very idea 
gives me new life. Which of the satires shall we start 
with ? ’ 

‘ Shall we say the ninth in the first book ? It gives 
such a fine opportunity for the castigation of the modern 
bore.’ 

‘Capital. I am proud to think that with so many 
translations ready to your hand you should prefer a n^ew 
one by me.’ 

‘ I want to avoid all published versions,’ answered 
Gerard, plausibly ; as he drew out a note case and opened 
it. 

The old man watched him with greedy eyes, and the 
weak lips began to quiver faintly. Did that note case 
mean payment in advance ? 

The question was promptly answered. Gerard took 
out a couple of folded notes, and handed them to his 
future collaborator. 

The old man fairly broke down, and burst into tears. 

‘ My dear young friend, your delicacy, your generosity 
overcome me,’ he faltered, clutching the notes with shak- 
ing fingers, ‘but I cannot — I cannot take this money.’ 
His hold of the notes tightened involuntarily as he spoke, 
in abject fear lest he should have to give them back. ‘ I 
suspect your proposed translation is only a generous 


The World. The Flesh, and The Devil 239 


fiction — devised to spare me the sense of humiliation in 
accepting this noble — this munificent honorarium. I own 
to you that the work you propose would interest me in- 
tensely. I perceive the opportunities of those satires — 
treated as fully as Pope treated them — the allusions, poli- 
tical, social, literary — and to a writer of your power — 
who have made your mark in the very morning of life by 
a work of real genius — the task would be easy.’ 

'You will help me then — it is agreed?' said Gerard, 
his pale cheeks flushing with a hectic glow. 

‘ With all my heart, and to the utmost of my power,’ 
answered Davenport, slipping the notes into his waistcoat 
pocket as if by an automatic movement. ‘ Without con- 
ceit I think I may venture to say that for the mere ver- 
bal work you could employ no better assistant.’ 

' I am sure of that, and for much more than merely 
vei'bal work. And now, good-day to you, Mr. Davenport. 
It is about your daughter s time for coming home, and 
she won't care to find a visitor here when she comes in 
tired after her walk.’ 

' Yes, she will be here directly,’ answered the old man, 
starting as with some sudden apprehension, ' and on sec- 
ond thoughts I would rather you did not tell her any- 
thing about our plans until they are carried out. When 
your book is published she will be proud, very proud, to 
know that her old father has helped in so distinguished 
a work ; but in the meantime if you changed your mind 
and the book were never finished she would be disap- 
pointed ; and then, on the other hand, I should not like 
her to know that I had so much money in my possession.’ 

All this was faltered nervously, in broken sentences, 
while Mr. Davenport followed his patron to the door, and 
showed him out, eagerly facilitating his departure. 

Gerard had dismissed his cab on arriving, and he 
walked slowly towards the river, carefully avoiding that 
road by which Hester was likely to return from her busi- 
ness errand. He was pale to the lips, and he felt like a 
murderer. 


240 The Worlds The Fleshy and The Devil. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


so, QUIET AS DESPAIR, I TURNED FROM HIM.'' 



ERARD called at Rosamond road on the follow- 
ing evening at the hour when he had been 
accustomed to find Mr. Davenport reposing 
after his comfortable little dinner, and his 
daughter reading to him. To-night the open 
window showed him Hester sitting alone in a 
despondent attitude, with her head resting on 
her hand, and an unread book on the table be- 


fore her. 

She came to the door in answer to his knock. 

‘ My father is out,' she said. ‘ He did not come home 
to dinner. He went out earlj^ in the afternoon while I 
was away, and he left a little note for me, saying that he 
had to go into London to meet an old friend. He did not 
tell me the friend's name, and it seems so strange, for we 
have no friends left. We have drifted away from all old 
ties.' 

' May I come in and talk with you ? ' Gerard asked. ‘ I 
am so sorry you should have any cause for uneasiness.' 

‘ Perhaps I am foolish to be uneasy, but you know — 
you know why. I was just going for a little walk. It is 
so sultry in doors, and we may meet him.' She took her 
neat little straw hat from a peg in the passage, and put 
it on. 

‘ We are not very particular about gloves in this neigh- 
bourhood,' she said. 

He perfectly understood that she would not receive 
him in her father’s absence, that even in her fallen estate, 
a work girl among other work girls, she clung to the con- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 241 


ventionalities of her original sphere, and that it would 
not be easy for him to break through them. 

They walked to the end of Rosamond road almost in 
silence, but on the Embankment, with the dark, swift 
river flowing past them, and the summer stars above, she 
began to tell him her trouble. 

‘You know how happy I have been,' she said, ‘ in a life 
which many girls of my age would think miserable and 
degraded ? ' 

‘ Miserable, yes ; degraded, no. The most feather- 
headed girl in England, if she knew your life, would 
honour you as a heroine.' 

‘Oh, please don't make so much out of so little. I have 
done no more than hundreds of girls would have done 
for a good old father. I was so proud and happy to think 
that I had saved him — that he was cured of the dreadful 
vice — and now, now I am full of fear that since 5 ^ester- 
day, somehow or other, he has obtained the means of 
falling back into the old habit — the habit that wrecked 
him.' 

‘ What makes you fear this ? ' 

‘ He insisted upon going out last night after dinner. 
He was going to the Free Library to look at the August 
magazines. I offered to go there with him. We used to 
read there of an evening in the winter, but since the 
warm weather began we have not done so. I reminded 
him how hot the reading-room wrould be with the gas, 
but he was restlessly eager to go, and I could not hinder 
him. The worst sign of all was that he did not like my 
going with him, and when he had been sitting there for 
half-an-hour he seemed anxious to get rid of me, and re- 
minded me of some work which he knew I had to finish 
before this morning. But for this work I should have 
stayed with him till he came home ; but I could not dis- 
appoint my employer, so I left my father sitting engros- 
sed in ‘ Blackwood,' and I hoped all would be well. He 
promised me to come straight hon^e when the library 


242 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


closed, and he was home about the time I expected him, 
but one look in his face, one sentence from his lips told 
me that by some means or other he had been able to get 
the poison which destroys him/ 

^ Are you not exaggerating the evil in your own mind 
from a delicate womans natural horror of intemperance V 
asked Gerard, soothingly. ‘ After all, do you think that a 
few glasses too much once in a way can do your father any 
harm ? He has seemed to me below par of late. He 
really may suffer from this enforced abstinence.' 

‘ Suffer ! Ah, you do not know, you do not know ! 
I may seem hard with him, perhaps, but I would give my 
life to keep him from that old horror — that madness of 
the past, which degraded a gentleman and a scholar to 
the level of the lowest drunkard in St. Giles'. There is 
no difference — the drink madness makes them all alike. 
And now someone has given him money, all my care is 
useless. I cannot think who has done it. I don't know 
of any so-called friend to whom he could apply.' 

‘ His letter tells you of an old friend ' 

^Yes! It may be someone who has returned from 
abroad — some friend of years ago who knows nothing of 
his unhappy story, and cannot guess the harm that money 
may do.' 

^ Pray do not be too anxious,' said Gerard, taking her 
hand and lifting it to his lips. 

She snatched the small cold hand away from him in- 
dignantly. 

‘ Pray don't,' she said. ‘ Is this a time for idle gallantry, 
and to me of all people — to me who have to deal only 
with the hard things of this life.' 

‘ No, Hester, but it is a time for love — devoted love — 
to speak. You know that I love you.' He took the 
poor little gloveless hand again and held it fast, and 
kissed the thin worked- worn fingers again and again. 

‘ You know that I love you, fondly, dearly, with all 
my soul. Hester, only yesterday a famous physician told 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 243 


me that I have not many years to spend upon this plane t 
— perhaps not many months. He told me to be happy 
if I could — happy with the woman I love, for my day of 
happiness must be brief even at the best. It is but a 
poor remnant of life that I offer, Hester, but it means all 
myself — mind and heart and hope and dreams are all 
centered and bound up in you. Since I have known you 
— since that first night under the stars when you were 
so hard and cold, when you would have nothing to say 
to me— since that night I have loved only you, lived only 
for you.’ 

She had heard him in despite of herself, her free will 
struggling against her love, like a bird caught in a net. 
Yes, she loved him. Her desolate heart had gone to him 
as gladly, blindly, eagerly as his heart had gone to her. 
There had been no more hesitation, no more doubt than 
in Margaret in the garden, when in asweet simplicity that 
scarce knew fear of shame, she gave her young heart to 
her unknown lover. Hesters was just as pure, and fond, 
and unselfish a passion; but she had more knowledge of 
danger than Goethe’s guileless maiden. She knew that 
peril lay in Grerard Hillersdon’s love — generous, reveren- 
tial as it might seem. It was only a year ago that she 
had sat, late into the night, reading Clarissa Harlowe, 
and she knew how tender, how delicate, how deeply 
respectful a lover might be and yet harbour the darkest 
designs against a woman’s honour. 

‘ You have no right to talk to me like this,’ she said 
indignantly. ‘ You take advantage of my loneliness and 
my misery. Do you think I can forget the distance your 
fortune has set between us ? I know that you are bound 
to another woman — that you will marry a woman who 
can do yon honour before the whole world. I know that 
in England wealth counts almost as high as rank, and 
that a marriage between a millionaire and a work-girl 
would be called a mesalliance.’ ° 

A lady is always a lady, Hester. Do you think your 


244 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


womanly dignity is lowered in my esteem because you 
have toiled to support your father — do you think there is 
any man in England’ who would not admire you for that 
self-sacrifice ? Yes, it is true that I am bound in honour 
to another woman — to a woman whom I loved four years 
ago, and whom I thought this world’s one woman — but 
from that first night when I followed you across the park 
— when you sent me away from you so cruelly, the old 
love was dead. It died in an hour, and no effort of mine 
would conjure the passion back to life. I knew then how 
poor a thing that first love was — a frivolous young man’s 
fancy for a beautiful face. My love for you is different. 
I should love you as dearly if that sweet face of yours 
was faded and distorted — if those sweet eyes were blind 
and dim. I should love you as the clerk loved the leper 
with a passion that no outward circumstance could change.’ 

They were walking slowly under the trees — in the 
warm darkness of a breathless August night. He had his 
arm round her, and though her face was turned from him 
she did not repulse him. She let his arm clasp her, and 
draw her nearer and nearer, till it seemed as they moved 
slowly under the wavering branches as if they were one 
already. Old vows, the opinion of the world, the past, 
the future, what could these matter to two beings whose 
hearts beat, throb for throb, in the sweet madness of the 
present ? 

‘ Love, say you love me. I know it, I know it — only 
let me hear, let me hear it from those dear lips. Hester, 
you love me, you love me.’ 

Her face was turned to him now — pale in that faint 
light of distant stars, dark violet eyes still darker in the 
shadow of night. Their lips met, and between his pas- 
sionate kisses he heard the faint whisper, ‘Yes, I love 
you — love you better than my life — but it cannot be.’ 

‘ What cannot be — not love’s sweet union — all our life, 
my poor brief life, spent together in one unbroken dream, 

like this, like this, and this ? ’ 

She wrenched herself out of his ai'ms. 


Tlie World y The Flesh, and The Devil, 


245 


‘ You know that it cannot be — ^you know that you can- 
not marry me — that it is cruel to fool me like this — with 
sweet words that mean nothing. No man ever kissed 
me before — except my father. You have made me hate 
myself. Let me go — let me never hear your voice again.’ 

‘ Hester, is there no other way ? Do you want marriage 
law to bind us ? Won’t you trust in me — won’t you be- 
lieve in me — as other women have trusted their lovers, 
all the world over ? ’ 

‘ Don’t,’ she cried, passionately, ‘ why could you not 
leave those words unspoken ? Why must you fill my cup 
of shame ? I knew those hateful words would come if 
ever I let you tell me of your love, and I have tried to 
hinder your telling me. Yes, I knew from almost the 
beginning what your love was worth. You will keep 
your promise to the great lady — your sister told me about 
her — and you would let me lose my soul for your love. 
You have been trying to win my heart — so that I should 
have no power to resist you — but I am not so weak and 
helpless a creature as you think. Oh, God, look down 
upon my loneliness — motherless, fatherless, friendless — 
take pity upon me because I am so lonely. I have none 
other but Thee.’ 

She stood with clasped hands, looking skyward in 
the moonlight ; to the irreligious man, sublime in her 
simple faith. 

'Hester, do you think that God cares about marriage 
lines ? He has made His creatures to love as we love — 
our love cannot be unholy in His sight — any more than 
the unwedded love of Adam and Eve in the Garden.’ 

‘ He never made us for dishonour,’ she answered, firmly. 
' Good-night, Mr. Hillersdon — good-night and good-bye.’ 

She turned and walked quickly, with steady steps, 
towards Rosamond road. A minute ago he had held her 
clasped close in his enfolding arms, had felt the impas- 
sioned tumult of her heart mixing with the tumult of his 
own — had counted her his very own, pledged to him for 


246 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


ever by those passionate kisses, those tears which mingled 
with his tears, tears of joy and triumph, the hysterical 
fervour of exultant love. And now she called him Mr. 
Hillersdon, and turned on her heel to leave him, invincible 
although she loved him. 

Angry, despairing, his thoughts took another turn — 
worthy of Lovelace. He told himself that he would 
diplomatise — reculer pour mieux sauter, 

‘ Let me walk with you to your door at least,’ he said, 

‘ if it is to be good-bye.’ 

She made no answer, and he walked by her side, watch- 
ing her profile in the dim light. She had wiped away 
her tears, her hot blushes had faded to marble pallor, her 
lovely lips were firmly set, as if the face were verily 
marble, delicately chiselled by some old-world sculptor. 

‘ Hester, you are very cruel to me.’ 

‘No, it is you who are cruel. Most of all when you 
tried to trade upon my weakness, to frighten me by say- 
ing you have not long to live. That was the cruellest of 
all.’ 

‘ But it is true, Hester — as true as that you and I are 
walking here side by side. When I first came into my 
fortune, knowing myself far from strong, I went to a dear 
old doctor who saved my life from a sharp attack of lung 
disease when I was a little boy. I saw him more than a 
year ago, and he was not particularly hopeful about me 
even then. He warned me that I must live carefully, that 
all strong emotions would tend to shorten my days. I 
saw him again yesterday, for I war bent on knowing the 
worst. He was all kindness and all truth. He told me 
that I had changed for the worse within the year that 
was gone, and that only by extreme carefulness could I 
prolong my life for a few years. And then he bade me 
go and be happy, as if that were such an easy thing to 
do.’ 

‘ Easy for you to be happy. You have all the world to 
choose from,’ she said, falteringly. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 247 


‘ Useless if there is only one thing in the world that I 
want — deny me that and you reduce me to misery/ 

‘ Did your doctor really tell you that you have but a 
few years to live ? " she asked, and he knew by her voice 
that she was crying, though her face was averted. ^ Don’t 
try to make me unhappy. I’m sure it is not true that he 
said so. Doctors don’t say such things.’ 

‘Sometimes, Hester. Even a physician will tell the 
truth once in a way when he is hard pressed. My doctor 
spoke ver}^ plainly. It is only in a life of calm — which 
means a life of happiness — that I can hope to prolong my 
existence a few years — just the years that are best and 
brightest if love lights them. If I am worried and un- 
happy my life will be a question of months not years. 
But if you do not care for me that makes no difference to 
you.’ 

‘ You know that I care for you. Should I be speaking 
to you now — anxious about your health — when you have 
tried to degrade me, if I did not care for you ? If love 
were not stronger than pride, I should never have spoken 
to you again. But I am speaking to you to-night for the 
last time. Our friendship is at an end forever.’ 

‘Our friendship never began, Hester. From the first 
I had but one feeling about you, and that was passionate 
love, which takes no heed of difficulties, does not forecast 
the future. I was wrong, perhaps, tied and hampered as 
I am, to pursue you ; but I followed where my heart led, 
I could not count the cost for you or for me. You are 
right — you are wise — we must part. Good night, dear 
love, and good-bye ! ’ 

His tone was firm and deliberate. She believed him — 
believed that he was convinced, and that trial and tempta- 
tion were over. She turned to him with a little choking 
sob, put her hand in his, and whispered good-bye. Those 
two hands clasped each other passionately, but with 
briefest pressure. She hurried from him to the little 
iron gate, let herself in at the unguarded door — what 


248 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


need of locks and bolts when there was so little to tempt 
the thief ? — and had vanished from his sight. 

He went back to the river side, and sat there for an 
hour or more watching the tide flow by, and thinking, 
thinking, thinking of the woman he loved and the brief 
span he had lor love and for life. 

‘ And she can believe that I renounce her — knowing 
that she loves me — having held her in my arms and felt 
her sweet lips trembling against my own in love's first 
kiss. How simple women are ! ' 

It was eleven o’clock before he remembered that he had 
asked Jermyn to sup with him at midnight. He walked 
home, for his heated brain and throbbing pulses needed 
active movement. He walked faster than he had walked 
three or fl^ur years ago, when he was a strong man. He 
thought of many things upon his way through streets 
that were still full of traffic and busy life, and once or 
twice as he caught the expression of a passing face he 
saw a kind of wondering horror in strange eyes that 
looked on him. 

' I must be looking miserably ill to-night,’ he thought, 
after one of those casual glances. ‘ Perhaps I am even 
worse than Dr. South seemed to think me. He question- 
ed me about rny family history, and I rather shirked the 
subject — paltered with the truth — told him my father 
and mother are alive and well — but the history is bad all 
the same. Bad, decidedly bad. Two lovely young 
sisters of my mothers faded off* this earth before they 
saw a twentieth birthday, and an uncle I can just 
remember died at three and thirty. My family history 
won’t justify a hopeful view of a bad case.’ 

He supped with Jermyn, and sat late into the night, 
and drank deeper than his wont, and he told Jermyn the 
story of his love. Of his free will he would not have 
chosen Justin Jermyn for a confidant, and yet he poured 
out all his hopes and dreams, the whole history of his pas- 
sion in all its weakness and all its strength to this man 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


249 


whose mocking cynicism continually revolted him. Yet 
it may be that the cynic s companionship was the only 
society he could have endured at this stormy period. 
The voice of conscience must be stifled somehow ; and 
how could it be so easily drowned as by this spirit of evil 
which denied the existence of good, which laughed at the 
idea of virtue and honour in man or woman ? 

‘If the first man who put a fence round a bit of land 
and called it his was an enemy to his fellow men,’ said 
Justin Jermyn, ‘ what of the first man who set up a nar- 
row standard of conduct, a hard and fast rule of morality, 
and said, by this standard and by this line and rule of 
mine shall men act and live for evermore, whether they 
be happy or miserable. Along this stony road, hedged 
and fenced on either side with scruples and prejudices, 
shall men tramp painfully to their dull and dreary end ; 
yes, even while in the fair open country on either side 
those hedges joy and love and gladness beckon to gardens 
of roses and valleys fairer than Eden ? Why torment 
yourself because you have given a foolish old man the 
means of indulging freely in his favourite vice — an inno- 
cent vice — since it hurts none but himself, whereby you 
have perhaps provided for him the happiest days of his 
life?’ 

‘I have given him the means of breaking his daugh- 
ters heart,’ said Gerard, remorsefully. 

‘Bosh ! No woman’s heart was ever yet broken by a 
drunken father. It needs a nearer and dearer love than 
the filial to break hearts. All that Hester Davenport 
wants in this life is to be happy with the man she loves. 
The drunken father might prove a stupendous difficulty 
if you wanted to parade your divinity through the elec- 
tric glare of the great world as Mrs. Gerard Hillersdon — 
but if you want her for your goddess, your Egeria, hid- 
den away from the glare and the din, the existence other 
father, drunk or sober, is of little moment.’ 

P 


250 Ihe Worlds The Fleshy and The iJevil. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

"'LOST, LOST ! ONE MOMENT KNELLED THE WOE OF YEARS/' 

ERARD let three whole days go by without 
making any attempt to see Hester. Lovelace 
himself could hardly have been more diploma- 
V He was completely miserable in the in- 

terval, counted the hours, and wondered per- 
petually whether the woman he loved was hunger- 
ing for his presence as he hungered for hers. He 
spent the greater part of the time with Jerniyn ; 
driving to Richmond one day to dine at the Star and 
Garter and sit late into the night watching the mists ris- 
ing in the valley, and the stars shining on the river, driv- 
ing to Maidenhead on another day and loitering on the 
river till midnight, and sitting in a riverside garden smok- 
ing and talking half through the sultry summer night ; 
and in this long tete-^-tete he sounded the uttermost 
depths of Justin Jermyn's godlessness and cheerful ego- 
tism. 

‘ The one thing that I am certain of in this Rhada- 
manthine universe,' said this easy-going philosopher, ‘ is 
that I, Justin Jermyn, exist, and this being my one cer- 
tainty, I hold that my one duty — the duty I owe to my- 
self — is to be happy and to make the best of the brief 
span which I am to enjoy on this earth. Reason tells me 
to be happy, and to live long I must abjure passion — rea- 
son tells me that serenity of mind means health and pro- 
longed life; and to this end I have learnt to take life 
lightly, as a farce rather than a tragedy, and to give my 
affection neither to man nor woman — to be slave neither 
of friendship nor of love. A selfish philosophy, I grant 
you ; but self is my only certainty/ 



The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


251 


'An admirable philosophy, if it were, as easy to prac- 
tise as to preach. And have you never loved ? ’ 

‘ Never, in the fashion that you call love. I have never 
been unhappy for a woman’s sake.’ 

‘ And the domestic affections — father, mother, family ? ’ 

' I never knew them. I was flung as a waif upon the 
world, reared upon charity, the architect of my own for- 
tune — such as it is. I am like Hester Summerson in 
“ Bleak House.” My mother was my disgrace, and I was 
hers. I am at least so far a follower of St. Paul that I 
owe no man anything ; I sink the second part of the pre- 
cept.’ 

Gerard meditated upon Jerrnyn’s character as he drove 
home, towards daybreak, the man himself slumbering by 
his side. It was perhaps only natural that a man cut off 
from all family ties, cheated of mother’s love and father’s 
friendship, a stranger to every bond of blood relationship, 
should have grown up to manhood heartless and passion- 
less, should have trained himself to the settled calm of a 
philosophical egotism, attaining in the morning of life 
that immunity from all the pains and penalties of the 
affections which the average egotist only achieves in old 
age. 

Gerard looked at the sleeper wonderingly, almost with 
envy. The fair pale face was unmarked by a line that 
told of anxious thought or deep feeling. The sleeper’s 
lij^s were parted in a faint smile, as if even in sleeping 
he felt the sensuous pleasure of life on a fair summer 
morning — the perfume of flowers from a hundred gar- 
dens, the soft breath of the wind creeping up from the 
west, warm with the glow oi last night s sunset. The joy 
of living I Yes, this man who loved no one enjoyed life 
in all its fulness; and he, Gerard, with two millions to 
spend, and, it might be, less than two years to spend them 
in, was miserable — miserable because of the cowardly in- 
certitude which made him unable to take the straight 
and honourable road to happiness while the sinuous and 
evil way lay open to him. 


252 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


He went to Chelsea at dusk on the third evening after 
Hester bade him farewell outside the gate of the little 
garden. She came quickly to the door in answer to his 
knock, and he was startled at the change which three 
days had made in her. The first words she spoke told 
him that it was not love of him which had so altered 
her, but poignant anxiety about her father. 

‘ He has never been home since that night,’ she said, 
ignoring every other thought. ^ I have been in search of 
him at every place that I could think of as possible for 
him to have gone to, but I have not found any trace of 
him since Tuesday night — the night you were here. He 
was at the Swan Tavern that night sitting in the 
coffee room, drinking brandy and water till the 
house closed. He was talking a good deal and he 
was ver}^' excited in his manner when he left, but the 
people would not tell me if he had drunk much. They 
pretended not to know how much brandy had been served 
to him. I have been to the police office, and the river 
has been dragged along by the embankment, where he 
and I used always to walk. They were very good to me 
at the police station, and they have promised to do all 
they can to find him, living or dead. But, oh,’ with a 
burst of uncontrollable weeping, ' I fear they will never 
find him alive. He could have had only a little money, 
and he must have spent it all on brandy, and then when 
he was mad with drink — ah, you don’t know how drink 
maddens him — he may have walked into the river, or 
thrown himself in, miserable and despairing. He was at 
the Swan at eleven o’clock, only a few minutes’ walk from 
the river, and I can find no one who saw him after that 
hour. I think he must have meant to come home — I 
don’t think he would wilfully desert me — but some acci- 
dent, some fit of madness — ’ 

She could not speak for sobbing. Gerard led her into 
the parlour, where the old man’s empty chair reminded 
him of that last interview, and of his diabolical trap to 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 253 


catch a weak sinners feet. Looked at in the light of 
Hesters grief to-night, and the awful possibilities she 
suggested, his crime seemed murder. 

‘ I will go to Scotland Yard, Hester, I will set the clev- 
erest detectives in London at work, and it shall go hard 
if they don’t find ^your father. My dearest, don’t give 
way to these morbid imaginings. Be sure he is safe some- 
where — only hiding because he feels that he has broken 
down, and disgraced himself in your eyes. He has been 
afraid to come home, knowing how grieved you would be 
at his backsliding. Be comforted, dear love.’ His arms 
were round her, and he drew the pale, pinched face to 
his own, and again their lips met, but this time Hester’s 
kiss was the kiss of despair. She clung to her lover in 
her grief and fear. She forgot the peril of consolation 
from that poisonous source. 

What comfort could he give her about her father, ex- 
cept the assurance that all that wealth could do to find 
him should be done, and that once being found every pos- 
sible means should be taken to insure his safety and wel- 
fare in the future. He told her that there were doctors 
who had made such cases as her father’s their chief study, 
homes where her lather could be surrounded with every 
luxury, and yet secured from the possibility of indulgence 
in his fatal vice. He showed her how happy and free 
from care her future might be if she would only trust her 
own fate and her father’s to him — and then came words 
uf love, burning words that have been spoken again and 
again upon this earth with good or evil import — words 
that may be true when the lips speak them, yet false 
within the year in which they are spoken — words that 
promise an eternity of love, and maybe uttered in all 
good faith, and yet prove lighter than the thistledown 
wafted across summer pastures. 

Three days ago she had been strong to resist the temp- 
ter, strong in womanly pride and maiden modesty. To- 
night she was broken down by grief, worn and fevered 


254 


The World, The Flesh, and The DeviV. 


by sleepless nights, despairing, and almost reckless. To- 
night she listened to those vows of love. What had she 
on this earth but his love, if the father to whom she had 
devoted her youth was indeed lying at the bottom of the 
river, her purpose in life gone for ever ? Who could be 
more lonely, and friendless than she was to-night. 

So she listened to his pleading, heard him while ho 
urged her to consider how poor a thing that legal tie was 
which he entreated her to forego ; how often, how con- 
tinually cancelled by the disgraceful revelations of the 
divorce court. 

‘ Time was when marriage meant till death,’ he said, 
* but that is a long exploded fashion. Marriage nowadays 
means the convenience of a settlement which will enable a 
man either to found a family or to cheat his creditors. 
Marriage means till husband and wife are* *tired of each 
other, and till the lady has grown hard enough to face 
the divorce court.’ 

And then he reminded her how the most romantic pas- 
sions, the loves that had become history were not those 
alliances upon which parish priest and family lawyer had 
smiled. He reminded her of Abelard and Heloise, of 
Henri’s passion for Gabrielle, and Nelson’s deathless love 
for Emma Hamilton. He urged that society itself had 
pardoned these fair offenders, for love’s sweet sake. 

Her intellect was too clear to be deceived by such 
shallow reasoning. 

On the very brink of the abyss she recoiled. Loving 
him with all her heart, knowing that life without him 
meant a colourless and hopeless existence — a hand to 
hand struggle with adversity, knowing by too bitter ex- 
perience that to be well born and poor meant lifelong hu- 
miliation, she yet had the strength to resist his pleading. 

‘ Your wife or nothing,’ she said, ‘ I never meant to 
hear your voice again after that night. I prayed to God 
that we might never meet again. And now for my 
father’s sake I humiliate myself so far as to ask your help. 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil, 


255 


If you will bring him back to me I will thank and bless 
you — and will try to forget your degrading: propositions/ 

‘ Degrading, Hester ! ’ he cried reproachfully, trying to 
take her hand again, the hand that had lain softly in his 
a few moments ago. 

‘ Yes, degrading. What could you say to any wretched 
lost woman in London worse than you have said to me ? 
You talked to me of love — and you offer me shame for 
my portion.' 

‘Hester, that is a woman's narrow way of looking at 
life. As if the priest and the ring made any difference.' 

‘If you cared for me you would make me your wife.' 

‘ I am not free to marry, Hester. I am bound by a tie 
which I cannot break yet a while. The tie may be 
loosened in years to come, then you shall be my wife. 
We will have the priest and the ring, the whole legal and 
ecclesiastical formula — although the formula will not 
make me one whit more your slave than I am this night.' 

‘ I don’t want a slave,' she said, resolutely, ‘ I want a 
husband whom I can love and honour. And now I am 
going back to the Police Station to ask if there is any 
news.' 

‘ Let me go with you.' 

‘ I had rather you went to Scotland Yard, as you pro- 
mised.' 

‘ I will go to Scotland Yard. I will do anything to 
prove my love and loyalty.' 

‘ Loyalty. Oh, Mr. Hillersdon, do not play with words. 
I am an ignorant, inexperienced girl, but I know what 
truth and loyalty mean — and that you have violated both 
to me.' 

They left the house together, in opposite directions. 
Gei^ard walked toward Oakley-street, hailed the first cab 
he met, which took him to Scotland Yard, where he saw 
the officials, and gave a careful description of the missing 
Nicholas Davenport, age, person, characteristics, manners, 
and habits. When asked if the missing man had any 


256 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


money about him at the time of his disappearance, he 
professed ignorance, but added that it was likely he had 
money. It was late in the evening when he left Scotland 
Yard, and he went into the park, and roamed about for 
some time in a purposeless manner, his brain fevered, his 
nerves horribly shaken. The horror of Nicholas Daven- 
port’s fate absorbed his mind at one moment, and in the 
next he was thinking of Hester, and his rejected love, 
troubled, irresolute, full of pity for the woman he loved, 
full of tenderest compassion for scruples which seemed to 
him futile and foolish in the world as he knew it, where 
illicit liaisons were open secrets, and where no man or 
woman refused praise and honour to sin in high places. 
He pitied the simplicity which clung to virtue for its 
own sake, a strange spectacle in that great guilty city, a 
penniless girl sacrificing love and gladness for the sake of 
honour. 

He went from the park to the Small Hours, a club 
where he knew he was likely to find Jermyn, who rarely 
went to bed before the summer dawn, ‘ It is bad enough 
to be obliged to go to bed by candle light from October 
to March,’ said Jermyn, who declared that any man who 
took more than three or four hours’ sleep in the twenty- 
four shamefully wasted his existence. 

‘ We are men, not dormice,’ lie said, ‘ and we are sent 
into this world to live — not to sleep.’ 

Gerard found Jermyn the life of a choice little supper 
party, where the manners of the ladies, although they 
were not strictly ‘in society,’. were irreproachable, so ir- 
reproachable, indeed, that the party would have been dull 
but for Justin Jermyn. His ringing laugh and easy 
vivacity sustained the gaiety of the party, and made the 
champagne more exhilarating than the champagne of 
these latter days is wont to be. 

‘ A capital wine, ain’t it ? ’ he asked, gaily. ‘ It’s a new 
brand, ‘‘ Fin de Siecle,” the only wine I care for.’ 

Gerard drank deep of the new wine, would have drank 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 257 


it had it been vitriol, in the hope of drowning Nicholas 
Davenport’s ghost ; and when the little banquet was 
over, and youth and folly were dancing to a waltz by 
Strauss in an adjoining room, he linked his arm through 
Jermyn’s and led him out of the club, and into the still- 
ness and solitude of St. James’ Park. 

Here he told his Mentor all that had happened, de- 
nounced himself as a traitor, and perhaps a murderer. 
‘ It was your scheme,’ he said, ‘ you suggested the snare, 
and you have made me the wretch I am.’ 

Jermyn’s frank laughter had a sound of mockery as he 
greeted this accusation. 

' That is always the way,’ he said, ‘ a man asks for 
advice, and turns upon his counsellor. You wanted to 
get that foolish, ofiBcious old father out of the way. I 
suggested a manner of doing it. And now you call me 
devil and yourself murderer.’ 

And then with airiest banter he laughed away Gerard’s 
lingering scruples, scoffed at man’s honour and at woman’s 
virtue, and Gerard, who had long ago abandoned all old 
creeds for a dreary agnosticism, heard and assented to 
that mocking sermon, whose text was self, and whose 
argument was self-indulgence. 

‘ I shudder when I think of the myriads of fanatics 
who have sacrificed happiness here for the sake of an im- 
aginary paradise — wretches who have starved body and 
soul upon earth to feast and rejoice in the New Jerusa- 
lem,’ said Jermyn, finally, as they parted at Buckingham 
gate in the first faint flush,of dawn. 

Less than half an hour afterwards Gerard was in the 
Rosamond road, and at the little iron gate that opened 
into the scrap of garden, where a cluster of sunflowers 
rose superior to the dust, pale in the steel-blue light of 
dawn. 

The lamp was still burning in the parlour, and he saw 
Hester’s shadow upon the Wind. She was sitting with 
her elbows on the table, her face buried in her hands, and 


258 The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


he knew that she must be weeping or praying. She had 
let her lamp burn on unconscious of the growing day- 
light. The window was open at the top, but the lower 
half was shut. He tapped on the pane, and the shadow 
of a woman’s form rose up suddenly, and broadened over 
the blind. 

‘ Hester, Hester,’ he called. He raised the sash, as she 
drew up the blind, and they stood face to face, both pale, 
breathless and agitated. 

‘You have heard of him, you have seen him,’ she cried 
excitedly. ‘ Is it good news ? ’ 

‘Yes, Hester, yes,’ he answered and sprang into the 
room.. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

“ AND I WAS HERS, TO LIVE OR TO DIE.” 


ETWEEN Reading and Oxford there is a river- 


side village, of which the fashionable world 
has yet taken scant notice. It lies beyond the 
scene of the great river carnivals, and the 
houseboat is even yet a strange apparition be- 
ilOM side those willowy shores. There is an old church 
with its square tower and picturesque graveyard 
placed at a bend of the river, where the stream 
broadens into a shallow bay. The church, a straggling 
row of old-world cottages, with over-hanging thatch and 
low walls, half hidden under roses, honeysuckle, and 
Virginia creeper, cottages whose gardens are gorgeous in 
the vivid colouring of old-fashioned flowers ; a general 
shop, which is also the post-office ; and a rustic butcher’s, 
with verandah and garden, constitute the village. The 
Rectory nestles close beside the church, and the Rectory 


The World, The * Flesh, and The Devil, 259 

garden runs over into the churchyard, long trails of 
banksia roses straggling across the low stone wall which 
divides the garden of the living from the garden of the 
dead. The churchyard is one of the prettiest in England, 
for the old Kector has cared for it and loved it during his 
five and thirty years’ incumbency, and nowhere are the 
roses lovelier or the veronicas finer than at that quiet 
resting-place by the river. 

The land round about belongs to a man of old family, 
who is rich enough to keep his estate unspoiled by the 
speculating builder, and who would as soon think of cut- 
ting off his right hand as of cutting up the meadows he 
scampered over on his sheltie, sixty years ago, into eligible 
building plots, or of breaking through the tall, tangled 
hedges of hawthorne and honeysuckle to make new roads 
for the erection of semi-detached villas. In a word. Low- 
combe is still the country pure and simple, undefiled by 
one touch of the vulgar suburban or the shoddy Queen 
Anne styles which mark the architecture of this closing 
century. 

On the brink of the Thames, and about fifteen minutes’ 
walk from Lowcombe Church, there is an old-fashioned 
cottage, humble as to size and elevation, but set in so ex- 
quisite a garden that the owner of a palace might envy 
its possessor a retreat so fair in its rustic seclusion. 

Here, in the middle of August, when the second crop 
of roses were in their fullest beauty, a young couple 
whose antecedents and belongings were unknown to the 
inhabitants of Lowcombe, had set up their modest manage 
of a man and two maids, a gardener, a dinghy and a 
skiff. 

The village folks troubled themselves very little about 
these young people, who paid their bills weekly ; but 
the few gentilities in the parish of Lowcombe were much 
exercised in mind about a couple who brought no letters 
of introduction, and who might, or might not, be an 
acquisition to the neighbourhood. The fact that Mr. 


260 The World, The Flesh] and The Devil. 


Hanley was alleged to have bought the house he lived in 
and forty acres of meadow land attached thereto, gave him 
a certain status in the parish, and made the question as to 
whether Mr. and Mrs. Hanley should or should not be 
called upon a far more serious problem than it would have 
been in the case of an annual tenant, or even a lease- 
holder. 

‘Nobody seems to have heard of these Hanleys,' said 
Miss Malcolm, a Scottish spinster, who prided herself upon 
race and respectability, to Mrs. Donovan, an Irish widow, 
who was swollen with the importance that goes with in- 
come rather than with blue blood, ‘ If the man was of 
good family surely some of us must have heard of him 
before now. Lady Isabel, who goes to London every 
season, thinks it is very curious that she should never 
have met this Mr. Hanley in society.’ 

‘ Old Banks was asking an extortionate price for the 
Rosary and the land about it,’ said Mrs. Donovan, ‘so the 
man must have money.’ 

‘ Made in trade, I daresay,’ speculated Miss Malcolm, 
whereat the widow, whose husband had made his fortune 
as a manufacturer and exporter of Irish brogues, reddened 
angrily. It was painful to remember in the aristocratic 
dolce far niente of her declining years that the name of 
Donovan was stamped upon millions of boots in the old 
world and the new, and that the famous name was still 
being stamped by the present proprietor. 

Finally, after a good deal of argument, it was decided 
at a tea-party, which included the elite of the parish, with 
the exception of the Rector, that until Mr. Muschatt, of 
Muschatt’s Court, had called upon the new people at the 
Rosary no one else should call. Whatever was good in 
the eyes of Muschatt, whose pedigree could be traced 
without a break to the reign of Edward the Confessor, 
must be good for the rest of the parish. 

And 'while the village Agora debated their social fate, 
what of this young couple ? Were they languishing for 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


261 


the coming of afternoon callers, pining for the sight of 
strange faces, and unfamiliar names upon a cluster of 
visiting cards ? Were they nervously awaiting the village 
verdict as to whether they were or were not to be visited? 
Not they ! Perhaps they hardly knew that there was 
any world outside that garden by the river, and that un- 
dulating stretch of pasture where the fine old timber 
gave to meadow land almost the beauty and dignity of a 
park. Here they would wander for hours meeting no 
one, hearing no voices but their own, isolated by the in- 
tensity of an affection that took no heed of yesterday or 
to-morrow. 

‘ I never knew what happiness meant till I loved you, 
Hester,' said the young man whom Lowcombe talked of 
as ‘ This Mr. Hanley/ 

‘ And I am happy because you are happy,' Hester an- 
swered, softly, ' and you will not talk any more about 
having only a year or twa to live, will you, Gerard ? 
That was all nonsense — only said to frighten me — wasn't 
it ? ' 

He could not tell her that it was sober, serious truth, 
and that he had in nowise darkened the doctor's dark 
verdict. Those imploring eyes looking up at him entreat- 
ed him to utter words of hope and comfort. 

‘ I believe doctors are often mistaken in a case, because 
they underrate the influence of the mind upon the body,' 
he said. ‘ I was so miserable when I went to Dr. South 
that I can hardly wonder he thought me marked for 
death.' 

‘ And you are happy, now, Gerard — really, really happy, 
not for a day only ? ' she asked, pleadingly, 

‘ Not for a day, but for ever, so long as I have you, 
sweet wife.' 

He called her by that sacred name often in their talk, 
never guessing how at every repetition of that name to 
which she had no right her heart thrilled with a strange, 
sudden pain. She troubled him with no lamentings over 


262 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 

the sacrifice he had exacted from her. She *had never 
reproached him with the treachery that had made her his. 
Generons, devoted, and self-forgetful, she gave him her 
heart as she would have given him her life, and her tears 
and her remorse were scrupulously hidden from him. To 
make him happy was now the sole desire and purpose of 
her life. Of her father s fate she was still uncertain, but 
she was not without hope that he lived. A detective had 
traced a man whose description tallied with that of 
Nicholas Davenport to Liverpool, where he had embarked 
on a steamer bound for Melbourne within two days of 
Davenport's disappearence from Chelsea. The passage 
had been taken in the name of Danvers, and the passen- 
ger had described himself as a clergyman of the Church 
of England. Hester was. the more inclined to believe 
that the man so described might be her father, as he had 
often talked of going back to Australia and trying his 
luck again in that wider world. It was not because he 
had failed once that he must needs fail again. 

‘ But how could he have got the money for his pass- 
age ?' asked Hester. ‘ He had exhausted all his old 
friends. It seems impossible that he could have money 
enough to pay for the voyage to Melbourne.' 

And then on his knees at her feet in the August moon- 
light, with tears and kisses and protestations of remorse, 
Gerard Hillersdon confessed his sin. 

‘ It was base, vile, iniquitous beyond all common ini- 
quity,' he said. ‘ You can never think worse of me for 
that act than I think of myself. But your father stood 
between us. I would have committed murder to win you ! ' 

^ It might have been murder,’' she said dejectedly. 

' I have told you my crime, and you hate me for it. I 
was a fool to tell you.' 

‘ Hate you ! No, Gerard, no; I can never hate you. I 
should go on loving you if you were the greatest sinner 
upon this earth. Do you think I should be here if I 
could help lovinfif. you ? ' 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 263 


His head sank forward upon her knees, and he sobbed 
out his passion of remorse and self-abasement, and receiv- 
ed absolution. He tried to persuade her that all would 
be well, that her father s health might be benefited by a 
long sea voyage, and that he might not fall back into the 
old evil ways. He might not ! That was the utmost 
that could be said; a faint hope at best. Yet this faint 
hope comforted h^r ; and in that summer dream of happi- 
ness, in the long days on the river, the long t^te-^tSte 
with a companion who was never weary of pouring out 
his thoughts, his feelings, his unbeliefs to that never 
wearying listener, all sense of trouble vanished out of her 
mind. She only knew that she was beloved, and that to 
be thus beloved was to be happy. Her burden of tears 
would have to be borne, perhaps, some day far away in 
the dim future, when he should weary of her and she 
should see his love waning. There must be a penalty for 
such a sin as hers ; but the time of penance was still afar 
off, and she might die before the fatal hour of disillusion. 
She thrust aside all thought of dark days to come, and 
devoted herself to the duty of the present — the duty of 
making her lover happy. All his sins against her were 
forgiven ; and she was his without one thought of self. 

They had begun their new life almost as casually as 
the babes in the wood, and after wandering about for a 
few days in the lovely Thames Valley, stopping at quiet 
out-of-the-way villages, they had come to Lowcombe, the 
least sophisticated of all the spots they had seen. Here 
they had found the Rosary, a thatch cottage set in a deli- 
cious garden, with lawn and shrubberies sloping to the 
river. Successive tenants had added to the original 
building, and there were two or three fairly good rooms 
under the steep gabled roof, one a drawing-room open to 
the rafters, and with three windows opening into a 
thatched verandah. The Rosary had long been for sale, 
not because people had not admired it, but because the 
owner, an Oxford tradesman, had asked an extravagant 
price for his property. 


2G4 The World, The Flesh, and, The Devil. 


Gerard gave him his price without question, having 
seen that Hester v/as enamoured of the riverside garden, 
and in three days the cottage was furnished, paint clean- 
ed, walls repapered, and everything swept and garnished, 
and Hester installed as mistress of the house, with a man 
and two maids, engaged at Reading. 

The furniture was of the simplest, such furniture as a 
young Clergyman might have chosen for his first vicarage. 
Hester had entreated that there might be nothing costly 
in her surroundings, no splendour or luxury which should 
remind her of her lover s wealth. 

‘ I want to forget that you are a rich man,’ she said. 
‘ If you made the house splendid I should have felt as if 
you had bought me.’ 

Seeing her painfully earnest upon this point, Gerard 
obeyed her to the letter. Except for the elegance of art 
muslins and Indian draperies, and for the profusion of 
choice flowers in rooms and landings and staircase, except 
for the valuable books scattered on the tables and piled 
in the window seats, the cottage might have been the 
home of modest competence rather than of boundless 
wealth. 

Hester’s touch lent an additional grace even to things 
that were in themselves beautiful. She had the home 
genius which is one of the rarest and choicest of feminine 
gifts — the genius which pervades every circumstance of 
home-life, from the adornment of a drawing-room to the 
arrangement of a dinner- table. Before he had lived at 
Lowcombe for a week Gerard had come to see Hester’s 
touch upon everything. He had never before seen 
flowers so boldly and picturesquely grouped ; nor in all 
the country houses he had visited and admired had he 
ever seen anything so pretty as the cottage vestibule, the 
deep embrasure of the long latticed window filled with 
roses, and in each angle of the room a tall glass vase of 
lilies reaching up to the low timbered ceiling. No hand 
but Hester’s was allowed to touch the books which he 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


265 


had brought to this retreat — a costly selection from his 
library at Hillersdon House. He had seen to the packing 
of the two large cases that conveyed these books, bi^t he 
had so arranged their conveyance that none of his ser- 
vants should know where they went after the railway 
van had carried them away. No one was to know of 
this secret nest by the river — not even Justin Jermyn, 
his confidant and alter ego. He wanted this new life of 
his — this union of two souls that were as one — to remain 
for ever a thing apart from his everyday existence ; he 
wanted this home to be a secret haven, where he might 
creep to die when his hour should come; and it seemed 
to him that death, the dreaded, inevitable end, would 
lose its worst terrors here, in Hester s arms, with her 
sweet voice to soothe the laborious passage to the dark 
unknown. 

And if death would be less awful here than elsewhere, 
how sweet was life in this rural hermitage. How bliss- 
ful the long summer days upon the river, with this gentle, 
pensive girl, who seemed so utterly in sympathy with 
him ; who, after one week of union thought as he thought, 
believed as he believed ; had surrendered life, mind, heart, 
and being to the man she loved, merging her intellectual 
identity into his, until nothing was left of the creed learnt 
in childhood and faithfully followed through girlhood, 
except a tender memory of something which had been 
dear and sacred, and which for her had ceased to be. 

For her Christ was no longer the Saviour and Redeem- 
er she had worshipped. He was only the ‘Man of Na- 
zareth’ — a beautiful and admirable character, standing 
('ut from the tumultuous back-ground of the world’s his- 
tory, radiant with the calm, clear light of perfect good- 
ness, the gifted originator of life’s simplest and purest 
ethics, a teacher whose wise counsels had been darkened 
and warped by long centuries of superstition, and who 
was only now emerging from the spectre- haunted mid- 
night of ignorance into the clear light of^reason, 

Q 


2GG 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


Gerard belonged to the school of sentimental agnostics. 
He was willing to speak well of Christ and of His j)ro- 
pliets, was full of admiration for the grand personality of 
Elijah, and thought the Book of Job the loftiest expres- 
sion of human imaginings. He loved to dwell upon the 
picturesque in the Bible, and Hester learnt from his con- 
versation how familiar an infidel may be with Holy Writ. 
When she told him how great a consolation faith had 
been to her in the darkest days of her poverty, he smiled 
at her sweet simplicity, and said how he too had been a 
believer till he began to think. And so, with many 
tears, as if she had been parting with some cherished 
human friend, she let the Divine Image of the Man-God 
go, and accepted the idea of the G-od-like Man, a 
being to be named in the same breath with Socrates 
and Plato, with Shakespeare and Milton — only a 
little higher than the highest modern intellect. Oiily 
a week, and a creed was destroyed, but in that 
week what a flood of talk about all things in heaven and 
on earth, what theories, and dreams, and philosophies 
sounded and explored. To this woman, whom he loved 
more fondly than he had ever dreamed of loving, Gerard 
gave the intellectual ex[)erience of his manhood, from the 
hour he began to ponder upon the problem of man s 
existence to his latest opinion upon the last book he had 
read. Had she not loved him, her own simple faith, the 
outcome of feeling unsustained by reason, might have 
been strong enough to stand fast against his arguments; 
but love took the part of the assailant, and the result 
was a foregone conclusion. Had he been a religious en- 
tnusiast, a fervid Papist, believing in family relics and 
miracle-working statues, she would have believed as he 
taught her to believe. Her faith, fortified by her love, 
would have removed mountains. With her, to love meant 
total self-abnegation. Even the sharp stings of remorse 
were deadened in the happiness of knowing that her lover 
was happy : and as she gradually grew to accept his idea 


The Worldj The Flesh, and The Devil. 267 


of a universe governed only by the laws of human reason, 
she came to think that whether Church and State had 
assisted at her marriage was indeed, as Gerard urged, of 
infinitesimal significance. And thinking thus, there was 
but one cloud on her horizon. Her only fear or anxiety 
was for her father’s welfare, and even of him she tried to 
think as little as possible, knowing that she could do 
nothing for him except await the result of his miscon- 
duct. She had given him all the fairest years of her 
girlhood, and he had accepted her sacrifice, and at the 
first opportunity had chosen his darling vice in preference 
to his daughter. She had a new master now, a master at 
whose feet she laid all the treasures of her life, for whom 
no sacrifice could ever be too much. 

Time is measured by feeling. There are days in every 
life which mean epochs. One eventful week may stand 
for more in the sum of existence than half a dozen placid 
monotonous years. It seemed to Hester while September 
was yet young, that her union with Gerard Hillersdon 
had lasted for half a lifetime. She could scarcely think 
of herself except as his wife ; all the past years seemed 
dark and shadowy, like a dioramic picture that melts 
gradually into something strange and new. The name of 
wife no longer wounded her ear. The new philosophy 
taught her that she was no less a wife because she had 
no legal claim to the title. The new philosophy had 
taught her that she had a right to do what she liked with 
her life, so long as she did not wrong her neighbour. 
One clause in that Church Catechism her childish lips 
had repeated so often, was blotted out forever. Duty to 
God was done with, since there was no God. All moral 
obligations were comprised in duty to man — a reasonable 
regard for the happiness of the la^rgest number. 

That renunciation of the creed of hope was not accom- 
plished without moments of mental agony, even in the 
midst of that dream of love which filled all the world 
with one adored presence. There were moments "when 


268 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


the young heart would have gone up to the old Heaven 
in prayer — praj^er for the endurance of this deep felicity, 
prayer for the creature she loved so well. But the new 
heaven was a blank — an infinite system of worlds and 
distances, measureless, illimitable — but there was no one 
there — no one — no mind, no heart, no love, no pity; only 
systems and movement, perpetual movement, which in- 
cluded light, heat, evolution, everything — a mighty and 
complex universe of whom her lover and herself were but 
unconsidered atoms, of which no higher existence had 
ever taken heed, since they two, poor sport of Life and 
Time, were the crowning glory of evolution. The progress 
of the species might achieve something loftier in infinite 
ages to come ; but so far, they two, Gerard and herself, 
were the highest outcome of immeasurable ages. For 
conduct, for happiness, for protection from the dangers 
that surrounded them, they had to look to themselves 
and to none other. 

Had she been less absorbed by her afiection for the 
creature, Hester would have more acutely suffered by 
this darkening over of the world beyond, which had once 
been her consolation and her hope ; but in Gerard’s com- 
panionship there was no need of worlds beyond. 

Those last weeks of summer were exceptionally beau- 
tiful. It seemed as if summer were lingering in the land 
even when September was drawing to its close. Trees 
and shrubberies, the flower beds that made great masses 
of vivid colour on the lawn, scarlet, orange, golden yel- 
low, deepest azure — were untouched by frost, unbeaten 
by rain. The broad, old-fashioned border, which gave an 
old-world air to one end of the garden was glorious with 
tall, gaudy flowers — tritomia, Japanese anemones, single 
and cactus dahlias, late-blooming lilies, and roses red 
and white. • And beyond the garden and encircling 
shrubbery, in the hedgerows and meadows, iii the copses 
and on the patches of hillocky common, heather, gorse, 
wildflowers, there was everywhere the same rich luxuri- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 269 


ance, the wealth of colour and perfume, the joyous ex- 
uberance of Nature which five or six weeks of real, old- 
fashioned weather can fling over the face of an English 
landscape. 

It may be that this abundant beauty, this delicious 
interlude of sunshine and blue sky helped Hester Daven- 
y)ort to forget the shadows in her life — to forget all that 
\vas painful and dubious in her position, and to exist 
only in the happiness of the present. Morning after 
morning the same sunlit river rippled round the boat, 
which seemed to dance and twinkle in the vivid light, as 
if it were a living thing, longing to be free and afloat. 
Morning after morning Gerard and Hester sculled their 
skiff along the windings of romantic backwaters, halting 
under a roof of greenery to idle away the sultry hours in 
talk or reading. Under those slanting willows, whose 
green tresses dipped and trailed in the bright blue water, 
they would sit for a long summer day, Hester’s dexterous 
fingers employed upon some piece of artistic embroidery, 
while Gerard read aloud to her. 

In this Wdj they went through all the devious wind- 
ings and eloquent incomprehensibilities of the Revolt of 
I>>lam — in this way Hester heard for the first time of the 
Ring and the Book — and wept and suffered with the 
gentle heroine, anti thrilled and trembled in those scenes 
of dramatic grandeur and fiery passion, unsurpassed in 
the literature of power. A new world opened before her 
as Gerard familiarized her with his favourite authors. 
The lawlessness of Shelley, the rude vehemence of the 
Elizabethan dramatists, the florid eloquence of Jeremy 
Taylor, the capricious brilliancy of De Quincy, the sweet 
wit of Charles Lamb. These and many other writers, 
long familiar to the man who had lived by literature, 
were all new to Hester. 

‘What an ignoramus I must have been/ she exclaimed, 
‘I thought when I had read Shakespeare and Miiton and 
Bj^ron and Tennyson I knew all the best treasures of 


270 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 

English literatnre — but now the treasures seem inex- 
haustible/ 

There were other literatures too to be tasted. They 
read Eugenie Grandet together, and Hester wept over the 
heroine’s disappointed life. They read new books and 
old books, having nothing to do in those six weeks of 
perpetual summer but read and talk and ramble, and 
worship one another, each unto the other the beginning 
and end of life. 

‘If it could last/ thought Gerard; but Hester, less 
experienced, and, therefore, more confiding in Fate, dreamt 
that this Elysium would last till the grim spectre, who 
tramples down all blisses, broke into their enchanted 
palace. 

She watched his face with fondest anxiety, and it was 
her delight to mark how the dark lines and the pinched, 
wan look seemed to be vanishing day by day. Who 
knows whether it was really so or whether in the face 
she worshipped she saw only what she so ardently longed 
to see, signs of improving health and youth renewed ? 
His eyes had a new brightness, she thought, and if he 
looked pale in the daylight, he had always a bright colour 
in the evening as they sat side by side in the luminous 
circle of the reading lamp. And again and again he as- 
sured her that happiness had given him a new lease of 
life, that all th'^ old aches and wearineas had been subju- 
gated, and that Dr. South would tell a very different 
story next time he overhauled his patient. 

‘ He told me to seek happiness, and I have sought and 
found it,’ he said, kissing the slender hands that had toil- 
ed so patiently in the past, and which now so often lay 
idly in his. 

Gerard thought of the Chart of Life behind the curtain, 
in his house at Queensgate,and fancied that whenhe should 
again trace a line upon that sheet of cartridge paper the 
outline would be bold and free, the stroke of the pen 
broad and steady. 


The Worldj The Flesh, and The Devil, 


271 


In those six weeks of happiness he had severed himself 
a,lmost entirely from his past life, and from that wrestling, 
striving world in which a bachelor under thirty, with two 
millions of money, is an important factor. The men of 
his set had left off wondering why he had started neither 
racing stud nor mammoth yacht, why neither the blue 
libbon of the turf nor the glories of the Royal Yacht 
Squadron had any attiaction for him. The masculine 
portion of society had set him down finally as a poor 
creature, without manly aspirations or English pluck. 
An aesthete, a dilettante, a man good for nothing but to 
keep a free luncheon table, and lose a hundred now and 
again at ecarte or piquet. Women were far more indul- 
gent. They talked of Grerard Hillersdon as quite too in- 
teresting — so delightfully unlike any one else. 

He had arranged that all his letters should be re- 
addressed to the Post Office at Reading, and twice a week 
he despatched the indispensable replies from Reading to 
the house -steward, to be posted in London. Thus even 
his own servants knew of no nearer address than Reading, 
which was fifteen miles from the Rosary. He answered 
only such letters as absolutely required replies, and to 
these his answers were brief and colourless. He had so 
concentrated all his thoughts upon Hester, and the })lacid 
sunlit life which they were leading, that it was only by a 
painful effort he could bring his mind to bear upon the 
commonplace of friendship or the dry-as-dust of business. 
Certain letters there were which had to be written some- 
how, the writing of which was absolutely mental agony. 
These were his weekly letters to the woman whom he 
was pledged to marry when the year of her widowhood 
was ended. And of that year a quarter had already gone 
by— a quarter of a year which had drifted him so far 
away from that old love that he looked back at the dim 
past wonderingly, and asked himself, ‘ Did I ever love 
her ? Was not the whole story a concession to society 
ethics, which demand that every young man should have 


272 The Worla. The Fleshy and The Devil. 


his goddess, de par la monde, every married woman her 
youthful adorer, every smart menage its open secret, not 
to know which is not to belong to the smart world ? ' 

Once a week at least he must write to the absent lady; 
for to neglect her might result in a catastrophe. Her 
nature, he told himself, was of the catastrophic order, a wo- 
man most dangerous to offend. He had never forgotten 
that moment in Hertford-street when, at the thought of 
his inconstancy, she had risen up in her fury, white to 
the lips, save where the hectic of anger burned upon her 
cheek in one red spot, like a flame. He might doubt — 
did doubt — if he had ever loved her; but he could not 
doubt that she loved him, with that love of woman which 
is a fashion. 

No ; he must maintain the falsehood of his position till 
he could find some way of issue from this net which he 
had made for himself in the morning of life. Now, with 
love at its apogee, he could conceive no phase of circum- 
stances that could make him false to Hester. Her life 
must be intertwined with his to the end. Albeit he 
might never parade his passion before the cold, cruel eyes 
of the world — eyes that stare down the poetry of life, and 
if a man married Undine would look at her with cold cal- 
culation through a tortoiseshell merveilleuse, and ask, 
‘ What are her people ? ’ 

Once a week the lying letter had to be written — lying, 
for he dared, not write too coldly lest the distant divinity 
should mark the change of temperature and come flying 
homeward to find out the reason for this falling-cfl'. So 
he secluded himself in his study one morning every week, 
telling Hester that he had troublesome business letters 
which must be answered, and he composed his laborious 
epistle, spicing his forced tenderness with flippancy that 
was meant for wit, elaborating society scandals from the 
faintest hints in * Truth’ or the ‘World,’ rhapsodising 
on summer time and the poets, and filling his tale of pages 
somehow. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 273 


His conscience smote him when Edith Champion praised 
these artificial compositions, this Abelard done to order. 
Her woman's wit was not keen enough to detect the 
falsehood of style and matter. 

‘What lovely letters you have written me lately,' she 
wrote, ‘ only too far apart. I never knew you write so 
eloquently, for you must remember how you used to put 
me ofi* with a couple of hurried pages. I am touched to 
the heart at the thought that absence seems only to bring 
us nearer together, more perfectly in sympathy with each 
other. I spent half the night — indeed, the mountains 
were rosy in the sunlight when I closed my book — read- 
ing Shelley, after your last letter, in which you told me 
how you had been reading him lately. You are right. 
We are too apt to neglect him. Browning is so absorbing 
with his analytical power — his gift of turning men and 
women inside-out and dissecting every mental phase — he 
so thoroughly suits the temper in the age we live in, 
which seems to me an age of asking questions for which 
there are no answers. Write oftener, dearest. Your de- 
lightful letters have but one fault — there are too few of 
them.' 

‘ So much for the divining rod of a woman's intelligence,' 
thought Gerard, as he tore up the letter. 

And then from the highly cultivated lady, who was 
well abreast of the stream of modern literature, and who 
was full of the current ideas of the age, he turned to the 
fond girl whose delight was to listen to the expression of 
his ideas, who accepted his gospel as if there was no other 
teacher on this earth, as if all the wisdom of Buddha, 
Confucius, and Socrates were concentrated in this young 
journalist of nine-and -twenty. He turned to Hester, and 
found in her companionship a sweet reposeful influence 
he had never felt in the old days when all his leisure hours 
were devoted to Edith Champion. 

In one of Edith's later letters there was a remon- 
strance. 


274 The Woiidy The Fleshy and The Devil. 

‘ You tell me nothing of yourself,’ she said. Not even 
where you are or what you are doing. Your paper and 
the Knightsbridge post-mark indicate that you are at 
Hillersdon House, but what are you doing there, and 
what can be keeping you in London when all the civiliz- 
ed world is scattered over moor and mountain, or roving 
on the sea ? I sometimes fear you are ill — perhaps too 
ill to travel. If I really thought that I should waive 
every other consideration and go to London to be near 
you. And yet your delightful letters could hardly be 
written by a sick man. There is no langour or depres- 
sion in them. A whim, I suppose, this lingering in town 
when everybody else has fled. You were always a crea- 
ture of whims, and now you have millions you are natu- 
rally all the more whimsical. Not to be like other peo- 
ple, was not that your ambition years ago when we used to 
discuss your career ? ’ 

How could he read such letters as these without a pang 
of remorse ? He suffered many such pangs as he read, 
but in the next half-hour he was floating idly with the 
current along the lonely river, and Hester’s pale young 
loveliness was opposite him, the sweet face dimly seen in 
the deep shadow of a broad straw hat. Nothing that art 
can lend to beauty was needed to accentuate that deli- 
cate harmony of form and colouring. The simple cambric 
frock, the plain straw hat, became her even better than 
court robes and plumes and jewels could have done. She 
was just at the age when beauty needs the least adorn- 
ment. 

‘ I don’t wonder that you refused to be tempted by all 
my offers of finery from French dressmakers,’ Gerard said 
to her one day. " You are lovelier in your cotton gowns 
than the handsomest woman in London in a hundred 
guinea confection by Raudnitz or Felix. But some day 
when we are in Paris I shall insist on dressing you up in 
their fine feathers, just to see how my gentle Hester will 
look as the Queen of Sheba. A woman of fashion, dressed 


The World, The Flesh, and The .Devil, 275 


in the latest modish eccentricity, always recalls her She- 
ban majesty to my mind/ 

‘ Some day when we are in Paris ! ’ He often spoke as 
if all their lives were to be spent together, as if wherever 
he went she would go with him. Sometimes in the midst 
of her happiness Hester lost herself in a labyrinth of 
mingled hope and fear. He had told her of an insur- 
mountable obstacle to their legal union, and yet he spoke 
as if there were to be no end to this blessed life in which 
they lived only for each other. Ah, that was the shadow 
on the dial, that was the one stupendous fear. To this 
wedlock of two hearts and minds, wedlock unsanctified 
by church or law, there would come the end — the falling 
off of love, sudden or gradual ; the bitter hopeless day on 
which she should awaken from her dream, and pass out 
of Paradise into the hard, cold world. She tried to steep 
her heart and mind in the bliss of the present, to shut 
her eyes against all possibilities of woe. Whatever 
the future might bring it would be something to re- 
member she had once been completely happy. Even a 
single day of such perfect bliss would shine like a star in 
the dark night of years to come. She would not spoil 
the ineffable present by forebodings about the future. 
And thus it was that Gerald Hillersdon had to listen to 
no repinings, to kiss away no remorseful tears. She who 
had given him her heart and life had given with all a 
woman’s self-forgetfulness. What matter how fate might 
use her by and by ? The triumph of her life was in her 
lover s happiness. 

It would be diifficult to imagine a life more secluded, 
more shut in and isolated from the outer world, or a spot 
more remote from the drawbacks of civilization ; and yet 
this young couple wandering in the lanes and over the 
commons, or gliding over sunlit waters in their picturesque 
skiff, with its striped red and white sail, and its gaily 
coloured oriental cushions, were the cynosure of several 
p0,ir of eyes, which took heed of the smallest details in 


276 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


their behaviour or their surroundings, and the subject of 
very active tongues, a subject which gave new zest to 
many a five o’clock tea within driving distance of Low- 
combe. 

Placid and inoffensive as their lives were, the young 
people who were known as Mr. and Mrs. Hanley had 
given umbrage to the whole neighbourhood by various 
omissions and commissions within the six weeks of their 
residence at the Rosary. 

In the first place they had taken no trouble to concili- 
ate the residents among whom they had descended sud- 
denly, or, in the words of the jovial and facetious curate 
of an adjoining parish, ‘ as if they had been dropped out 
of a balloon.’ They had brought no letters of introduc- 
tion. They had net explained themselves. They had 
planted themselves there in the very midst of a select and 
immaculate little community without producing any evi- 
dence of their respectability. 

‘And yet no doubt they expect people to call upon 
them,’ said Lady Isabel Glendower, the wife of a very 
ancient Indian General, who went to garden parties in a 
bath chair, and whose wife and daughters had taken upon 
themselves a tone of authority in all social matters upon 
the ground of the lady’s rank as an earl’s daughter. ‘Mr. 
Muschatt actually was going to call. I met him last week 
riding that wretched old cob towards the Rosary, and 
was just in time to stop him. “ Surely you are not going 
to compromise us by calling on these people,” I said, “until 
we know more about them.” ’ 

‘ The foolish old thing saw the young woman on the 
river the other day, and was so taken by her pretty face 
that he wanted to know more of her,’ said Clara Glen- 
dower, who was young and skittish. ‘ He raved to me 
about her transparent complexion and simple cotton frock. 
Old men are so silly.’ 

‘ I think. Lady Isabel, the less we say about these 
young people the better,’ said Miss Malcolm, with awful 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 277 


significance. ‘ They are evidently not the kind of persons 
you would like your daughters to know. A young man, 
able to spend money as freely as this young man does, 
cannot be without a circle of friends ; and yet I can 
answer for it that not a creature except the tradesmen's 
boys has been to the Rosary for the last six weeks.' 

‘But if they are honeymooning they may wish to be 
alone,’ suggested Clara. 

‘ Honeymooning, nonsense, child,’ retorted Lady Isabel, 
who prided herself in being. outspoken. ‘ I daresay that 
young woman, in spite of her simple cotton frock, has had 
as many honeymoons as there are signs of the Zodiac. 
The most notorious women in London are the women 
who wear simple cotton frocks and don’t paint their 
faces.’ 

‘ Mr. and Mrs. Hanley have been six weeks at Low- 
combe, and have never been to church. That stamps 
them,’ said Mrs. Donovan, at whose luxurious tea-table 
the conversation took place. 

The Rector heard the fag end of the debate. 

‘I must see if I can persuade them to come to church,’ 
he said, in his mild, kindly voice. ‘ It is rather too much 
of a jump at conclusions to suppose that because they are 
not church-goers they are disreputable. Half the young 
men of the present generation are agnostics and Darwin- 
ians, and a good many young women imitate the young 
men’s agnosticism just as eagerly as they imitate their 
collars and ties. I am old enough to know that one must 
make prodigious allowances for the erratic intellect of 
youth. Whether Muschatt calls on the Hanleys or not, 
I shall call and find out what manner of people they are. 
I am sorry I have put it off so long.’ 

The Rector had a way of coming down with the heavy 
foot of benevolence upon the serpent’s head of village ma- 
lignity, now and again, on which account he was gener- 
ally spoken of as an eccentric, and a man who would have 
been better placed anywhere than in the Church of Eng- 


278 The World y The Flesh, and The Devil, 


land, an elderly widower,living with a soft-hearted maiden 
sister, childless, irresponsible, altogether lax in his ideas 
of morality, a man who took pity upon fallen village girls, 
and gave himself infinite trouble to save them from fur- 
ther evil, and to help them to live down their disgrace; 
a man who lived valiantly in the work of female emigr a- 
tion, and to whom almost every mail from the new world 
brought ill-spelt letters of gratitude and loving remem- 
brance. Such a man the elite of Lowcombe considered 
should have cast in his lot at the East End of London. 
In a small settlement of eminently correct people he was 
out of place. He was too good for the neighbourhood, 
and the neighbourhood was too good for him. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

“SOME DIM DERISION OF MYSTERIOUS LAUGHTER.” 

jHILE Mr. Gilstone, the Rector of Lowcombe, 
whose worst vice was procrastination, was 
meditating a ceremonious call upon his new 
parishioners, accident, anticipated his design, 
and brought him face to face with the young 
woman whose morals and cotton frocks had 
met with such drastic treatment at Mis. Donovans 
Thursday tea* drinking. 

Sauntering in the rectory garden on Saturday after- 
noon, Mr. Gilstone's keen glance was attracted by a figure 
seated by near an old, old tombstone in a corner of the 
churchyard where the rectory wall, in all its wealth of 
foliage, made an angle with the willowy bank of the river. 
The sunlight on the white cambric frock gave the seated 
form and bent brown head an air of something supernal, 



The World j The Flesh and The Devil. 279 


as it were Dante’s divine lady in the light of Paradise. 
The Rector stepped upon a little knoll that was level with 
the top of the wall in order to look down upon the lady 
sitting on the tomb. 

Yes, it was Mrs. Hanley — that Mrs. Hanley of whose 
antecedents and present way of life Lowcombe spoke 
shudderingly. He could just distinguish the exquisite 
profile under the shady straw hat, he could see the small 
and delicate ear, transparent in the sunlight, the perfect 
curve of the throat rising from a loosely tied lace hand- 
kerchief, the graceful lines of the slender girlish figure in 
the plain white gown. No art had V)een used to enhance 
that perfect beauty, and none was needed. The purity 
of the white gown, the simplicity of the Tuscan hat, 
were in harmony with that placid and ideal loveliness. 

‘ Poor child, I hope with all my heart that all is well 
with her,’ mused the Rector, as he stepped down from the 
grassy knoll, and strolled to the gate opening into the' 
churchyard, and then with quiet step made his way to 
the tomb against which Hester was sitting, on a grassy 
ridge, over which periwinkle and St. John’s wort had been 
allowed to run riot, half covering the crumbling grey 
stones and clothing the cumbrous early Georgian sepulchre 
with fresh young beauty. This was a corner of God’s 
acre in which the Rector permitted a careless profusion 
of picturesque foliage, a certain artistic neglect, which 
w; s part of his plan. 

TIjo lady was reading, and on looking down on her 
book, Mr. Gilstone saw that she was reading Shelley’s 
‘ Alastor.’ 

She looked up at the sound of his footfall among the 
leaves, and then calmly resumed her reading. He drew 
nearer, hat in hand. 

‘ Allow me to introduce myself to you, Mrs. Hanley,’ 
he said, in his mild pleasant voice, ‘ I have been meaning 
to call upon you and Mr. Hanley for a long time, but 
indolence and procrastination are the vices of old men. 


280 TJie Worldj The Flesh, and The Devil. 


Seeing you just now from my garden I thought I might 
snatch the opportunity of making friends with you here 
on my own ground/ 

She had risen in confusion, blushing violently, with a 
scalding rush of crimson over her brow and cheeks, and 
her heart beating with almost suffocating force. A crim- 
inal upon whose shoulder the law had just laid its iron 
hand could hardly have suffered more. In that one 
moment Hester Davenport realised what it was to be a 
social pariah. It was as if she had awakened suddenly 
from a dream of bliss to find herself alone in the cold 
workaday world, face to face with a judge who had power 
to denounce and punish. 

‘ Pray, sit down,' said the old man, ‘ and let us have a 
little chat.' 

He seated himself on the low boundary wall — lowest 
just at this part of the churchyard, where the fairy spleen- 
Wort grew in every chink of the crumbling stones. 

"You have been my neighbours for some time,' said the 
Rector, " and yet I have seen so little of you. I am sorry 
you don't come to my church — but perhaps you are people 
who object to our simple village services, and you go 
further afield.' 

"We do not go to any church,' Hester faltered. "It 
would be only hypocrisy if we were to join in services 
which have very little meaning for us. We honour and 
love the Gospel for all that is true and beautiful in it, but 
we cannot believe as you and your congregation believe, 
and so it is better to stop away from church.' 

"You are very young to have joined the great army of 
unbelivers,' said the Rector, with no change in the gentle- 
ness of his tone, or the friendly light of his eyes. He 
had heard too many young people prattle of their agnos- 
ticism to be particularly shocked or startled at the words 
of unbelief from these girlish lips. " Were }7 0 u brought 
up in a household of infi^dels — were your early teachers 
unbelievers V ■ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 281 


* Oh, no. I was once a Christian,’ she answered, with 
a stifled sob. ‘ I once believed without questioning — 
believed in the divinity of Christ, believed that He c.ould 
cure the sick and raise the dead, believed that He was 
near me at all hours of my life ; nearest when I was in 
deepest sorrow.’ 

‘ And when did you cease to believe in His presence — 
when did you lose the assurance of a Saviour who could 
pity your sorrows and understand your temptations ? ’ 

‘Doubt came gradually, with thought, and thinking 
over the thoughts of others far wiser than myself.’ 

‘ Mr. Hanley, your husband, is an agnostic, I take it ? ’ 

The drooping head bent a little lower ; the hand on 
the open book turned a leaf or two with a restless move- 
ment. 

‘ He does not believe in miracles,’ she answered, reluc- 
tantly. 

‘ Nor in a life to come — nor in an Almighty God to 
whom we are all accountable for our actions. I know the 
creed of the youthful Freethinker — universal liberty ; 
liberty to follow the bent of his own desires and his own 
passions wherever they may lead him ; and for the rest 
the Gospel of Humanity, which means tall talk about the 
grandeur and wisdom of man in the abstract, combined 
with a comfortable indifference to the wants and sorrows 
of man in the concrete, man at Bethnal Green or Haggar- 
stone. Oh, I know what young men are,’ exclaimed the 
Rector, with indignant scorn ; ‘ how shallow, how ar- 
rogant, how ready to absorb the floating opinions of their 
day, and to make ready-made ideas for the results of 
original thought. Frankly, now, Mrs. Hanley, it is only 
since your marriage that you have been an infldel ? ’ 

Hester faltered a reluctant ‘Yes.’ 

And then, after a brief pause, she began to plead for the 
man she idolised. 

‘ Indeed, he is not shallow and ignorant,’ she said. ‘ He 
has thought long and deeply upon the religions of the 
R 


282 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


world, has brooded over those instincts which lead the 
hopes and desires of all of us to a life beyond — an unseen 
universe. He is not a strong man — he may never live to 
be old — indeed I sometimes fear he will not, and we have 
both talked often and long about the other world which 
we once believed in. We should be so much happier it 
we could believe — if we could hope that when death parts 
us it will not be for ever. But how can we hope for the 
impossible — how can we shut our eyes to the revelations 
of science — the fixed, immutable laws which hem us in on 
every side, and show us of what we are made and what 
must be our end.’ 

‘ Dust we are, and to dust we must return,’ said the 
Rector, ‘ but do you think there is nothing outside the 
dust — nothing that will survive and ripen to more per- 
fect life when this poor clay is under the sod. Do you 
think that the innate belief of all human kind carries no 
moral weight against the narrow laws of existence under 
the conditions and restrictions in which we know it ; con- 
ditions and restrictions which may be changed in a 
moment by the fiat of Omnipotence, as the earth is 
changed by an earthquake or the ocean by a storm. Who, 
looking at the placid, smiling sea could conceive the fury 
and the force of a tempest if he had never seen one ? You 
would find it as difficult to believe in that level water 
lifted mountains high or in the racing surf, as to believe 
in the survival of intellect and identity, the passage from 
a known life here to an unknown life hereafter. The 
philosophers of these latter days call the unknown the 
unknowable, or the unthinkable, and suppose they have 
settled and made an end of everything which they cannot 
understand. But I am not going to preach sermons out 
of church, Mrs. Hanley, I am much more interested in you 
than in your opinions. At your age opinions change, and 
change again — but the personality remains pretty much 
the same. Even if you and your husband don’t come to 
church yon are my parishioners, and I want to know more 
of you, I hope you both like Lowcombe ? ’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 283 

‘ Oh, it is far more than liking. We both love the 
place.’ 

‘ And you mean to live among us ? You will not grow 
tired of the river, even when winter sheds a gentle grey- 
ness over all that is now so brilliant ? There are people 
who say they are fond of the country — in summer. 
Take my word for it, the souls of those people are never 
far from Oxford -street. To love the country one must 
know and admire every phase and every subtle change 
of every season. Awakening from a long sleep one should 
be able to say at the first glance across the woods and 
hills — 'this is mid October or this is March.’ One should 
know the season almost to a week. You are not one of 
those who only care for a midsummer landscape, I hope V 

'No, indeed ! I love the country always — and I hate 
London.’ 

The shudder with which the last words were spoken 
gave earnestness to the avowal. 

' You have not been happy in London,’ said the Rector, 
his quick ear catching a deeper meaning than the words 
expressed. 

' I have been very unhappy there/ 

' And here you are quite happy. As a girl you had 
troubles ; your surroundings were not all you could wish ; 
but your wedded life is perfectly happy, is it not ? ’ 

‘ Utterly happy.’ 

‘ Come to church, then, my dear Mrs. Hanley. Come 
and kneel in our village church — the old, old church, 
where so many have knelt, and given thanks in joy, and 
been comforted in affliction. Come and give thanks to 
God for your happiness. It is not for you, who scarcely 
know what mathematics mean, to refuse to believe in a 
God because His existence cannot be mathematically de- 
monstrated. Your own heart must tell you that you 
have need of God — a conscience outside your own con- 
science, a wisdom above your own wisdom. Come and 
kneel among us, and give God thanks that your lines 


284 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


have been set in pleasant places — and, since I am told 
you are rich, come and work among our poor. It is good 
tor the young and prosperous to interest themselves in 
the old and needy. If you go among our cottagers at 
first as a duty, and perhaps thinking it an unpleasant duty, 
you will soon come to love the work for its own sake. 
There is sweetness in your face that tells me your heart 
will open to the unhappy.’ 

‘I love visiting the poor,’ Hester answered, brightening 
a little at this suggestion. ‘ I have been poor, and know 
what poverty means. I should like to go about among 
your cottagers — if — if my husband ’ — she faltered at the 
word, in spite of all those broader ideas which Gerard 
had taught her — ‘ if my husband will let me.’ 

‘ He could hardly refuse you the happiness of making 
others a little happier — you who possess all. the material 
elements of happiness in super-abundance. I feel assured 
Mr. Hanley will consent to your devoting a few of your 
leisure hours to my cottagers. 1 will only send you to 
wholesome cottages, and really deserving people. But, 
as they are all good Churchmen, I want you to come to 
church first. They are sure to talk to you about the 
church services, and you will be embarrassed, and they 
will be shocked if you have to say that you never go to 
church. L can’t tell you what that means to simple peo- 
ple, for whom church is the ante-chamber of Heaven. 
To them it is anathema maranatha, the abomination of 
desolation.’ 

‘ I cannot go to church,’ said Hester, with averted face. 

‘ Not even to thank God for your happy life, for your 
marriage with the man you love ?’ 

‘No, no, no!’ 

‘ Then, my dear young lady, you lead me to think that 
this seemingly happy union is one for which you dare not 
thank God ; or in plain speech that you are not Mr. Han- 
ley’s wife.’ 

Her sobs were her only answer. All those grand theo- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


285 


ries of universal liberty, of virtue that knew not law, 
which she had taken to heart of late, all she had learned 
at second-hand from Gerard, and at first hand from Shel- 
ley, vanished out of her mind, and she sat by the Rec- 
tor s side crushed by the weight of her sin, as deeply con- 
vinced of her own shame and worthlessness as she who 
knelt amidst the accusing Pharisees and waited for the 
punishment of the old law, unexpectant of the new law 
of mercy. 

" I am sorry for you, my dear young lady, deeply and 
truly sorry. You were not born for a life of degradation.’ 

‘ There is no degradation,’ protested Hester, through 
her tears ; ‘ my love for him and his for me is too com- 
plete and true ever to mean degradation. He has read 
much and thought much, and has got beyond old codes 
and worn out institutions. I am as much and as truly 
his wife as if we had been married in your church yon- 
der.’ 

‘ But you are not his lawful wife, and other wives, 
down to the humblest peasant woman in this village, will 
think badly of you, and all Christian women will think 
you a sinner — a sinner to be pitied and loved perhaps, 
but a sinner all the same. Why should that be ? There 
is no other tie, I hope ? Mr. Hanley is not a married 
man ? ’ 

‘ Oh, no, no I ’ 

‘ Thank God. Then ha must marry you. It will be 
my duty to put the matter before him in the right light.’ 

‘ Oh, pray do not interfere,’ exclaimed Hester. ‘ tie 
would think I had come to you to complain — he would 
love me less, perhaps — would think me designing, selfish, 
coring only for myself. There is nothing in life I care 
for but his happiness, and he is perfectly happy now. He 
knows that I am devoted to him, that I would give my 
life for him — ’ 

‘You have given your honour — that to such a woman 
as you is sometimes more than life.’ 


2S6 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


* Honour or life, I could not count the cost of either 
for his sake/ 

‘ And he must be a villain if he can refuse to give you 
back to the position from which you have fallen — for his 
sake/ 

' It will come — it will come in time — I feel that he will 
do what is right — in his own good time/ 

‘ You cannot afford to wait for that. You are far too 
good to occupy your present position for another day or 
hour, unle^ your betrayer will consent to make wrong 
right. Pray trust me, my dear young lady. Though I 
am a rustic I have seen something of human nature, and 
I will act with discretion. I will not be precipitate/ 

'I would much rather you did not speak — you don’t 
know him. He is wayward and fanciful — you may turn 
him against me — and we are so happy now — utterly 
happy — and it may oe only for a short time. He has 
been told that he may not live long. When he has gone 
all my lifi^ may be one long repentance — one long atone- 
ment for having made his last years happy.’ 

‘ My poor childt women have a natural bent for self- 
sacrifice, which too often leads them into sin. Come, 
come, my dear, don’t cry ; and remember whatever may 
happen I mean to be your friend/ 

Hester sighed. The circle of perfect love — that nar- 
row, isolated spot in the universe in which she had been 
living for the la^t seven weeks was broken in upon sud- 
denly from the outside world, and everything in this 
golden dream of hers took new lights and new colours 
when looked at by other eyes. In that sweet solitude 
of two, they had been like Hero and Leander, like Rosa- 
lind and Orlando, like any two creatures who exist only 
for each other, and for whom all the rest of creation is no 
more than a picturesque background to that dual life. 
Love in its first brief intensity scarcely believes in that 
outer world. 

' Yes, my dear, however this story of yours may end — 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 287 


and I hope and believe it will not end badly — you may 
rely upon my friendship/ said the Rector, ‘ and if you 
want a woman’s help or counsel my old maiden sister will 
not withhold it from you. When the world «ras thirty 
years younger I had a young wife whom I adored, and 
who had something of your complexion and contour, and 
a baby daughter. Before my little girl was three years 
old God took her, and her mother, who had been in weak 
health from the time of the child’s birth, died within a 
year of our loss. Those two angel faces have followed 
me down the vale of years. I never see a child of my 
daughter’s age without a little thrill of tenderness or pity. 
I never see an interesting girl of your age without think- 
ing that my little girl might have grown up like her. So 
you see, Mrs. Hanley, I have a reason for being interested 
in you over and above my duty as a parish priest.’ 

‘You are all that is kind/ faltered Hester, ‘ and I wish 
I were worthier ’ 

‘It is not you who are unworthy. No, I will say no 
more, lest I should seem harsh to one you love. May I 
walk part* of the way home with you ?’ 

‘ I shall be very pleased to have your company, but I 
have a boat close by.’ 

‘ Then let me take you to your boat ? ’ 

He went with her to a little reedy inlet, where she had 
moored her dinghy, and he stood on the bank and 
watched her as she sculled the light boat away towards 
the setting sun, with the easy air of one used to the work. 

‘Poor child/ sighed the Rector. ‘How strange that 
one is so apt to feel more interested in a sinner than in a 
saint. It is the mystery of human life that takes one’s 
fancy, perhaps ; the sinner’s appeal to pity, as against the 
saint’s confidence in her own holiness. I suppose that is 
why Mary Magdalene is the most popular character in the 
Gospel.’ 

Hester rowed slowly up the sunlit river, creeping close 
in shore by the stunted willows which spread their low 


288 Ihe World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


shadows across the water. She crept into the shadow as 
the wounded deer creeps away to die, striken to the heart 
by her conversation with Mr. Gilstone. It was the first 
time she had been brought face to face with stern reality 
since she had allowed her lover to lead her by the hand 
into the fool’s Paradise of unsanctioned love. He had 
taught her to believe that the sanction meant very little, 
and that the loyalty and unselfishness of a mutual at- 
tachment were an all sufficient proof of its purity ; but 
these modern views of his did not stand by her for a 
quarter of an hour under the earnest interrogation of a 
village parson. All her old-fashioned ideas, her reverence 
for God s word, her shrinking from man’s disdain, rushed 
back into her mind, and Philosophy and Free Thinking 
were scattered to the winds. She stood confessed, a 
woman dishonored by the sacrifice love had exacted from 
her. She looked back to those quiet evenings by the 
river, when she and her father had walked up and down 
in the starlight, with Gerard Hillersdon beside them, 
sympathetic, respectful almost to reverence. Ah, what 
bliss it had been to listen, or to talk with him in that 
tranquil hour when the burden of daily care had been 
laid down ! What calm and unalloyed happiness, with- 
out thought or fear of the future — without regret for the 
past. 

How altered now were her thoughts, when to look back 
upon the past was horror, when to think of the future 
filled her whole being with aching fear. 

This had been one of her rare days of solitude, and it 
was ending badly. Gerard had left for London after their 
leisurely breakfast, and was not to return until the eight 
o’clock dinner. Business or whim had urged him to spend 
a day in the metropolis — to lunch at one of his clubs, 
and to hear the gossip of town and country from men 
who were ^ passing through ’ — to breathe that more 
piquant atmosphere of the world in which everybody 
knows everybody else’s latest secret. The freshness and 


Tlie World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 289 


the quiet of the country would be all the more delicious, 
he told himself, after that brief plunge into the dust and 
movement of the town. 

Hester had not pouted or looked sorrowful at his de- 
parture, but the day had been sorely long ; and now this 
chance meeting with the Rector had filled her with sad- 
ness and apprehension — dread lest he should break the 
spell that held their tranquil lives, by a vain interposition 
upon her behalf. And then came the agonizing thought 
that her lover, in spite of a devotion that seemed all-ab- 
sorbing, did not love her well enough to make her his 
wife. Sophistry might make their union seem beautiful 
without the bond of marriage; but still that question re- 
mained unanswered — Why were they not married ? 

At this quiet evening hour, perhaps one of the saddest 
in Hester s life, there came suddenly upon her the sound 
of laughter — a man s frank laughter, joyous as the song 
of birds, joyous almost to ecstasy; and round the bend of 
the river a steam launch, gaily decked with crimson 
draperies, and Oriental cushions, came quickly toward 
her, with the figures of its occupants defined against the 
brightness of the western sky. Foremost of the group 
stood the tall and lissom form of a young man with yel- 
lowish auburn hair and sharply cut features, and grouped 
about him were women in light summer gowns and airy 
hats, and young men in white flannels. A ripple of laugh- 
ter and joyous voices went past her as they passed, and 
then above it all rose that same mirthful laugh she had 
heard before the boat came in sight. The laughter of the 
man with auburn hair and pale, sharp-cut face was 
wafted up the river, in the wake of the boat, on the 
soft evening air. That joyous group of youthful strang- 
ers touched her with a keener sense of her own loneli- 
ness — her father mysteriously vanished out of her life ; 
the friendship of all old friends forever forfeited by her 
conduct ; nothing and no one left to her save the man for 
whom she had surrendered all, If he should grow weary 


290 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


of her, if he should change, what had she on earth? 
Nothing! Her glances turned involuntarily to one deep 
shadowy pool she knew of under an inward curve of the 
bank. Nothing but death I And in the new dispensation 
of Darwin, Spencer, and Clifford, death by suicide was no 
more terrible than death by inevitable decay. There 
was no afterwards — there was no Great Father outside 
this little world to whom the self-destroyer had to 
render up his account. 

At a quarter to eight came the glad sound of wheels — 
sound for which Hester had been listening for the last 
half-hour, and two minutes later Gerard was in the lamp- 
lit hall, amidst the cool freshness of newly cut roses, and 
Hester was in his arms, faltering her fond welcome be- 
tween tears and laughter. 

‘ Why, my darling, you are almost hysterical. This 
won’t do, Hettie.’ 

‘ The day has been so long. But you are home at last,’ 
she sighed, drying her tears, the first he had seen since 
one stormy burst of weeping which he must needs re- 
member all his life ; the passionate tea.rs of a woman 
betrayed by the man she loved too well to punish, even 
by her resentment. 

‘ Home at last — home by the very train and at the 
very hour I named — and uncommonly glad to be home, 
sweet wife.’ 

How glibly he pronounced the name — and yet, and yet, 
she blushed at the sound, as she had not done since the 
novelty had worn off, and she accepted the gospel of free 
thought. All that the good old parson had said to her 
was in her thoughts that night, though she smiled and 
brightened and grew happy in the companionship of the 
man she adored. 

He had come home laden with gifts for her — ^books, 
trinkets — not valuable gems, since she steadfastly refused 
any such gifts — but the light and airy inventions of mod^ 
ern art — ^new settings of moonstones or starstones, fairy- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 291 

like silver hair-pins, ornaments that would be worthiest 
when their fashion was past, dainty toys and trifles to 
scatter about the tables, grotesques in silver and enamel, 
Dresden china bon-bon boxes, Japanese idols. 

‘ Throw them into the river if you don't like them,' he 
said, as they sat at the cosy round table after dinner, 
with the lamplight shining upon the glittering toys which 
Gerard produced one after another from a capacious 
leather bag, taking child-like pleasure in Hester's won- 
dering admiration. ^ I am growing richer and richer — - 
appallingly rich, My stocks and shares were chosen with 
such extraordinary foresight by that marvellous old man 
with the umbrella that the value of them has gone on 
increasing ever since he bought them. My Rasorias, my 
South- Westerns, my Waterworks, British and Foreign, 
my London Guarantee Shares — everything I own has an 
upward tendency. I cannot spend a quarter of my in- 
come unless I do something wild and foolish. Think of 
something, Hester ! Imagine some mad, delightful esca- 
pade which would cost us twenty thousand in a week's 
excitement. We must launch out somehow ! ' 

‘ I can imagine nothing so wild or so foolish as my 
love for you,' said Hester, growing suddenly thoughtful, 
' for when you cease to care for me I must die. There 
will be nothing left.' 

‘ Cease to care for you ! While there is consciousness 
here,' touching his forehead, ^ that will never be ! ' 

‘ And you really love me — with all j^our heart ? ' 

‘ With ail my heart, and mind, and strength. There's 
the Churi Catechism for you. I am surprised I can re- 
member so much of it.' 


292 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


CHAPTER XX. 



“AS GENTLE AND AS JOCUND AS A JEST.” 

R. GILSTONE thought long and seiiously 
of Ills interview with the young lady who 
was known to Lowcombe as Mrs. Hanley. In 
his many years’ widowhood, during which 
his maiden sister Tabitha had cared for his 
creature comforts, kept, his servants in order, main- 
tained a spotless propriety throughout his roomy 
old house, and assisted him with counsel and man- 
ual labour in his cherished garden and church-yard, her 
mind had become the other half of his mind, and he had 
no secrets from her, not even the secrets of other people; 
so within a few hours of that conversation in God’s Acre 
Tabitha Gilstone knew as much of Mrs. Hanley’s sorrows 
as her brother had been able to discover. 

Tabitha was not surprised to hear that there was some- 
thing wrong. That had been decided by the consentient 
voices of Lowcombe some weeks ago. Tabitha sorrowed 
for this poor young woman, as she always sorrowed for 
human error, with its inevitable sequence of human suf- 
fering, most especially when the sinner was young, and 
perhaps with just one extra touch of tenderness when the 
sinner was fair. She was sorrowful, but she was not 
surprised. She was not one of those women who' are 
quick to pronounce the female sinner a calculating minx; 
and the male sinner an artless victim. She felt very 
angry with the unknown owner of the Kosary, and de- 
nounced him in unmeasured terms. ‘ The scoundrel,’ she 
cried, ‘ not content with having brought disgrace upon a 
pretty, refined young creature, he must needs try to per- 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 293 


vert her mind. First he makes her an outcast, and then 
he makes her an Atheist.’ 

‘ Don’t be too hard, Bertha,’ remonstrated the Rector, 
‘1 daresay Mr. Hanley does not think he is doing any 
wrong in introducing this poor girl to the new learning. 
He thinks that he is leading her in the light of truth, not 
into the darkness of infidelity. You don’t know how 
arrogant the new school of agnosticism is, how confident 
in materialism as the royal road to the well-being of man- 
kind. For us who believe, the unbelievers can find noth- 
ing but contemptuous pity. I expect to find this young 
man a difficult subject to deal with. He has been spoilt 
by too much wealth and a little learning.’ 

‘But you will do all you can, Basil,’ urged Miss Gil- 
stone, ‘you will persuade him to behave honourably, or 
if he is such a wretch as to refuse, I hope you will per- 
suade that poor girl to leave him at once and for ever. 
Let her come to us if she is friendless ; I will find a home 
for her, either in this house or with some of my friends.’ 

‘ Ah, Tabitha, how many girls have we ever succeeded 
in turning from the way of evil while there were any 
flowers in the path ? It is only when they come to the 
thorns and briars that they can be persuaded to turn 
back. However, I mean to do my uttermost in this case.’ 

‘ And how much good you have done in such cases, 
Basil ; how many happy wives and mothers on the other 
side of the world have to thank you that they are not 
outcasts in the streets of London ? ’ 

The keen impression made by her conversation with 
the Rector wore off as the dreamy days went by, and 
Hester was once more happy, and unashamed of her hap- 
piness like Eve in Eden. The river was still at its loveliest 
and Gerard and Hester spent the greater part of their 
days in a punt moored in some romantic backwater or by 
some willowy spot, he stretched in sybarite idleness 
among down cushions, she reading aloud to him. She 
had a beautiful voice, and by long habit reading aloud 


294 Tlie World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


had become very easy to her. Together in this way they 
dipped into W. K. Clifford and Herbert Spencer, Compte 
and Mill — he picking out chapters or essays for her 
to read, she accepting meekly whatever he put before her 
as the best. They read the poets also, in these golden 
afternoons, when there was just enough of coolness to 
make the west wind crisp and pleasant, and no hint of a 
wind from the east. 

One morning she happened to mention the launch, and 
the fair-haired, pale-faced young man whose joyous gusts 
of laughter had intensified her sadness. 

‘ I felt melancholy and despondent that afternoon,' she 
said, ‘ and his laughter saddened me.' 

‘ Describe him to me again, Hester,' said Gerard. ‘ Stay.' 
He sketched a profile lightly in the fly leaf of a book and 
handed the book to her. ‘ Was your laughing youth 
like that ? ' 

‘Yes,' she cried, wonderingly, ‘that is the very face. 
You know him, then ? ' 

‘Yes, I know him.' 

He took a letter out of his pocket and re-read it, frown- 
ingly, a letter that had come to him with his last batch 
from the Post Office at Reading. 

‘ What has become of you ? Where are you hiding 
yourself?' wrote Justin Jermyn. ‘Surely you are tired 
of your Garden of Eden by this time. I heard of you in 
London the other day, so you have not carried your bliss 
to some faraway valley where the novelty of your envi- 
ronment might prolong the freshness of your feelings. I 
can fancy no impassioned love lasting more than six 
weeks. The strain upon mind and imagination is too 
great — the tension must snap the cord.' 

‘ May not one see you ? Is your happiness too sacred 
for the vulgar eye of a friend ? I feel sure the dear 
young lady would like me, however she may object to 
the ruck of your acquaintance — and for the rest I am 
discretion itself — a very lion's mouth for any secret you 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 295 


may drop into me; as deep, as silent as that deep water 
near the Church of St. George the Greater, where the ene- 
mies of the Venetian public sleep so quietly. Seriously, 
I am pining to see jmu. Tell me when and where I am 
to go to you. Remember, there is a mystic sympathy 
which links your life to mine. You cannot escape me. 
Whether you will or no, in your joys and in your sor- 
rows, I shall be near you. — Yours for life. ‘ J. J.' 

A hateful letter to Gerard in his present mood, ren- 
dered still more hateful by the idea that Justin Jermyn 
might be his near neighbor. 

‘ Did you see the name of the launch ? ' he asked. 

‘ No : I only noticed the young man’s face, and that 
the girls who were grouped about him were handsome 
and attractive. Is he a man whom you dislike?’ 

^ Yes, when I am away from him. But when I am in 
his company he always contrives to amuse and interest me, 
so that, in spite of myself, he seems my dearest friend.’ 

‘ I understand,’ said Hester. ‘He is very clever — but 
not a good man. And yet he had such a joyous laugh, 
and seemed so happy.’ 

‘ My dearest, do you think only the good people are 
happy. Some of the most joyous spirits in this world 
have gone along with hearts utterly and innately bad.’ 

They were taking tea on the lawn a day or two after 
this conversation, their rustic table and restful wicker 
chairs grouped under a great weeping ash which had once 
been the chief feature of the cottage garden, when a boat 
shot rapidly towards the rustic landing stage, and a lis- 
som form appeared upon the steps, and came with airy foot- 
steps, mercurial, vivid as light, across the close-shorn turf. 

‘At last,’ cried Justin Jermyn. ‘ I thought I could not 
be mistaken.’ 

‘ In whom, or in what ? ’ asked Gerard, starting to his 
feet and contemplating the unbidden guest with a most 
forbidding frown. 

‘ In my old friend Mr. Hanley. I am staying with 


296 The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


Matt Muller^ the landscape painter, on his house-boat 
hard by Wargrave ; and I heard, casually, the description 
of a certain Mr. and Mrs. Hanley, who are in some wise 
a mystery to the neighbourhood — the lady exquisitely 
beautiful (with a bow and a smile for Hester), the gentle- 
man inordinately rich, young, idle — all that my dear 
friend Gerard is, in short. So I made a shrewd guess as 
to Mr. Hanley’s identity, and — me voici. Pray present me 
to Mrs. Hanley.’ 

He stood before them smiling, self-assured, light as 
Ariel himself, clad from top to toe in white, and with 
glints of sunlight in his blonde hair, and a delicate trans- 
parency in his blonde complexion, untouched by wind or 
weather. He looked as if nothing were further from his 
thoughts than the suspicion that his company could be in 
any wise distasteful. 

Hester had risen in confusion, and stood leaning a lit- 
tle against one of the low branches of the ash, blushing 
painfully. This was the first visitor who had broken the 
spell of their sweet solitude, and, as in her meeting with 
the Rector, she felt again the sharp bitter sense of being 
brought face to face with that outer world which could 
but think ill of her. 

‘ Mr. Jermyn — my wife,’ said Gerard, gravely, with em- 
phasis upon the word wife. 

Justin Jermyn dropped into one of the low chairs, set- 
tled himself in a nest of dainty Moorish cushions, and 
waited to be refreshed with tea, which Hester prepared 
for him with hands which trembled a little despite her 
efforts at self-control. In her conversation with the Rec- 
tor the sense of the old man’s fatherly pity had been 
more than she could bear without tears. In the presence 
of Justin Jermyn that which she felt was the sense of a 
hidden malignity, the consciousness of being despised and 
made light of by the man who fawned upon her. 

She handed him his cup in silence, oflfered him the light 
dainties from the prettily decked table with the air of 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


297 


performing a social duty in which her inclination had no 
part, and when she had done this she opened a big Flor- 
entine umbrella, and walked slowly away, leaving the two 
men under the ash. 

‘ How shy she is/ said Jermyn, looking after her, ' and 
how lovely. Even your rapturous tirades had hardly 
prepared me for so much beauty. Yes, it is the true 
Ra&ielle face — the transparent purity of colouring — the 
delicate and unobtrusive features — ’ 

‘ Why did you hunt me down here ? ' demanded Ger- 
ard, rudely breaking in upon these encomiums. ‘ Do 
you suppose that when a man has made a paradise for 
himself — remote and secret — he wants to be intruded 
upon by — ’ 

‘ The serpent,’ interrupted Jermyn. ‘ Perhaps not. 
Yet the serpent always finds his way in through some 
gap in the hedge. And after all there must be limits to 
the pleasures of a dual solitude. Love may remain un- 
changed, but ideas become exhausted, and the tete-a-tSte 
begins to bore. If the serpent hadn’t upset everything 
at an early stage in their union, how heartily sick of 
Eden Adam and Eve must have become by the time 
Cain and Abel were weaned. ‘ Don’t be angry, Gerard. 
Granted that I am a pushing cad, and that I go where 
1 like to go rather than where I am wanted. I come to 
you with all the news of the town — of the world — fresh 
in my mind, the scandals, and follies, and the social en- 
tanglements of which your newspapers tell you nothing. 
You can surely put up with me for an hour or so.’ 

Gerard put up with him till midnight. He dined at 
the Rosary, and the little dinner of three had a gaiety 
which the t§te-^-tSte dinners had somewhat lacked lately. 
Even Hester was amused by a style of conversation that 
was new to her, and the unpleasant effect of Mr. Jermyn’s 
personality wore off, and was almost forgotten. He 
evidently liked and admired Gerard, and that was much 
in his favour. 


298 The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil, 


The moon was at the full, silvering wood and meadow, 
river and islet, as they bade the visitor good night, and 
stood and watched him row down the stream towards 
Wargravc, a ghost-like figure in his white raiment, under 
that cold white light. 

‘ He amused you, Gerard,' said Hester, as they walked 
slowly back to the house. ‘ I was glad to hear you laugh 
so merrily. We have been too serious of late — our books 
have saddened us.' 

‘ Yes, they all tell the same story ; that nature is every- 
thing and we are nothing. Jerioyn is an amusing rascal, 
and as I told you yesterday, I like him well enough when 
1 am with him.' 

‘You called me your wife when you introduced him to 
me,’ murmured Hester hiding her face upon his shoulder. 
‘You will never let him find out that I am — anything 
less than your wife — will you Gerard ? I feel as if that 
man's scorn would wither me.' 

‘ His scorn ! My dearest, he admires you beyond 
measure, and do you think he is the kind of man to be 
influenced in his opinion of any woman by a marriage 
certificate ? He knows that 1 adore you. He shall 
never know anything else about us but that we are de- 
voted to each other. And if he is ever wanting in rev- 
erence for you, in the smallest degree, he shall never enter 
our house again.' 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 299 



CHAPTER XXL 

" COMPARE DEAD HAPPINESS WTVK LIVING WOE.” 

\ 

'FTER that one evening s hospitable entertain- 
ment Mr. Jermyn considered himself free of 
the Rosary. He dropped in at any hour he 
liked, and always brought cheerfulness with 
him. He joined Hester and Gerard in their 
long, lazy mornings in the punt, discussed their 
books, old and new, seeming to know every book 
that had ever made its mark in the world, and to remem- 
ber, as few readers remember. Gerard was certainly the 
gayer for his company, and listened with interest to an 
account of the visitors on the Pegotty, where Matt Muller 
received a society that could only be described as mixed. 
Happily the Pegotty was berthed at a distance of ten 
miles, and the painter s Bohemian guests rarely went over 
a mile beyond her moorings. 

All the dreamy seriousness that had tinctured Hester 
and Gerard’s long dialogue evaporated in the presence of 
Justin Jermyn, like the mist wreaths that float upward 
from the riverside meadows under the broadening sun- 
shine. The greatest problems in life and time were 
touched as lightly by Jermyn as the airiest nothings of 
tea-table gossip. It was impossible to be earnest in the 
society of a man for whom existence was a jest, and the 
Sybarite’s luxury the supreme good below the stars. 

' If I ever contemplate another world, it appears to me 
as a planet in which there is perpetual summer ; a place 
where there are no bad cooks, and where the fowls of the 
air have no legs;’ he said, with his joyous laugh, when 


300 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


Hester pleaded for that last forlorn hope of man’s pro- 
gressive existence somewhere, somehow. 

Mr. Gilstone called twice at the Rosary during these 
halcyon days at the beginning of October, only to find 
that Mr. and Mrs. Hanley were out on the river. Gerard 
tossed the Rector’s cards aside with a contemptuous laugh 
on the second time of finding them on the hall table. 

‘ What pushing rascals these parsons are,’ he exclaimed. 
‘ This fellow calls twice in ten days, instead of taking 
offence at my neglect. Wants money out of me for his 
schools, or his coal-club, no doubt. Well, the parson’s 
life is not a happy life, as I know by home experience, 
and I’ll reward his pertinacity with a comfortable 
cheque.’ 

Hester turned red, and then pale at the sight of the 
Rector’s cards. 

‘ He may not want money,’ she faltered. 

' May not ! My dearest, he is a priest. The priest 
who doesn’t go for your purse is a rara avis that I don’t 
expect to find along this river.’ 

‘ He may wish to see you.’ 

‘ Then his wish shall remain ungratified. I am not 
going to let the world into our paradise by the thin end 
of the clerical wedge.’ 

‘ You need not fear the world,’ Hester answered, with 
the first touch of bitterness that Gerard had heard in any 
speech of hers. ' People know that there is something 
wrong in our lives. They have all held themselves 
aloof.’ 

‘ The voice is the voice of my poetic Hester, but the 
words are the words of the Philistine,’ said Gerard, light- 
ly, as he left her. 

She stood looking at the Rector’s cards, lying far apart 
where Gerard’s careless hand had flung them. She felt 
that she had offended the man whom she loved better 
than all the world besides. Oh, fool, self-conscious fool, 
to care for what that hard cold, outside world might think 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 301 


or say of her. Whatever sacrifice she had made, was it 
not enough reward to have made him happy, him for 
whom life was to be so brief, who had need to crowd into 
a few years the love and gladness which for other men 
may be spread over the length of prosaic years, making a 
little spot of colour and light here and there on the dull 
gray woof of a monotonous existence. 

The Rector called for a third time, and this time met 
the master of the house at the hall door. 

‘Good morning, Mr. Gilstone. Pray step inside my 
den here,’ said Gerard, throwing aside his hat. ‘ I am 
ashamed that you should have troubled to pay me a third 
visit. I was on the point of sending you a cheque.’ 

‘ I have not asked you for any money, Mr. Hanley,’ 
answered the Rector, gravely, seating himself in the 
proffered chair, and ‘looking round the room with the 
shrewd and observant glance of eyes that have been look- 
ing at things for sixty-six years. 

There was nothing in the cottage parlour, transformed 
into a study, to indicate dissipated habits ; none of the 
slovenliness of the Bohemian idler. Many books, flowers 
everywhere, an all-pervading neatness distinguished the 
apartment. 

‘ You have not asked me ? No, no,’ said Gerard, light- 
ly, ‘ but I know that in an agricultural parish there must 
be a good deal of poverty, and every well-to-do parish- 
ioner should pay his quota. Winter is approaching, 
though we may be beguiled into forgetting all about him 
in this lovely autumn. You are thinking of your coal 
and blanket club, I dare say. Allow me to write you a 
cheque.’ He opened a drawer, took out his cheque-book, 
and dipped his pen in his ink. 

‘ No, Mr. Hanley,’ said the Rector, decisively ; ‘ I cannot 
take your money. I am here to talk to you of something 
much more precious than money.’ 

‘ Of my soul, perhaps ? ’ questioned Gerard, his coun- 
tenance hardening. ‘ I may as well tell you at once, Mr. 


302 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


Gilstone, that I am an unbeliever in the Christian revela- 
tion, and, indeed, in transcendentalism of all kinds/ 

‘ You are a Darwinian, I conclude ? ’ 

* No ; I am nothing ! I neither look before nor after. 
I want to make the most of life in the present, while it is 
mine. God knows it is short enough for the longest 
lived amongst us — and death comes no easier to me, the 
unit, because I know the universe is working steadily 
towards the same catastrophe.’ 

* You dread death ? ’ asked the Rector. 

^ Who does not. Contemplate death in whatever form 
you win, he is the same hideous spectre. Sudden des- 
truction, slow decay ? Who shall say which is the more 
terrible ? But come now, Mr. Gilstone, you are not here 
to talk metaphysics. I say again let me write you a 
cheque for your school, your cottage hospitals, your some- 
thing.’ 

‘ And I say again, Mr. Hanley, that I cannot take your 
money.’ 

‘ Why not ? ’ 

‘ I cannot take money for alms from a man who is liv- 
ing in sin ! ’ 

‘ Oh, that’s your drift, is it, sir ? ’ cried Gerard, spring- 
ing to his feet ; ‘ you force yourself into my house in 
order to insult me ! ’ 

‘No, Mr. Hanley, I am here in the hopes of helping 
you to mend your life.’ 

‘ What right have you to suppose that my life needs 
mending ?’ 

‘ Say that it is only the shrewdness of an old man who 
has lived long enough to know something of human 
nature. Two young people with ample means do not 
live as you and Mrs. Hanley are living without some 
reason for their isolation, and in your case I take it the 
reason is that the lady is not your wedded wife. If that 
is so, let me, while your relations are still unknown to 
the world at large, marry you to this young lady, quietly, 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 303 


some morning, with no witness but my sexton and my 
dear old maiden sister, both of whom know how to keep 
a secret/ 

‘ My dear Mr. Gilstone, you are vastly obliging ; but I 
am really a little amused at your naivetd Do you really 
forget — suppo e I am not legally married to the lady I 
call my wife — that there are plenty of registrars in Eng- 
land who would marry me to her as quietly as you can, 
and make no favour of the business. 

‘I do not ignore the existence of registry offices where 
any groom in the country may be married to his master s 
daughter at a clay or two’s notice; but I think Mrs. 
Hanley would prefer to stand by your side at the altar, 
and be married to you according to the ordinances of the 
Church.’ 

‘ I do not think Mrs. Hanley has any profound belief 
in those ordinances. She is satisfied with the knowledge 
that she possesses my whole heart, and that her love has 
made me completely happy.’ 

* And you accept her too willing sacrifice of virtue and 
good name, and reserve to yourself the i ight of deserting 
her when you are weary of her.’ 

‘ You have no right to talk to me in this strain.’ 

‘ Yes, Mr. Hanley, I have a right — the right of an old 
man and parish priest; the right which comes from my 
deep pity for that innocent-looking girl whom yon have 
made your victim. I have talked with her, and every 
word she uttered helped to assure me that she was not 
created to be happy in a life of sin. She is not the kind 
of woman to accept such a life readily — there must have 
been more than common art in the seducer who betraved 
her ’ 

‘Hold your tongue, sir,’ cried Gerard, passionately. 
‘How dare you pry into the lives of a man and woman 
whom you see united and happy ; who ask nothing from 
you ; neither your friendship nor your countenance ; 
nothing except to he let alone. My wife — the wife of 


304 The Worla, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


my heart and of my home — the wife I shall never forsake 
— is satisfied with her position, and neither you nor any 
one else has the right to interfere in her behalf. Your 
priesthood involves no privileges for one to whom all creeds 
are alike mischief-making and superstitious. ’ 

‘ I have been taught that the men who set aside old 
creeds have adopted humanitarianism as their religion,’ 
said the Rector, ' but there is not much humanity in your 
reckless sacrifice of this young lady — who, I say again, 

was born for better things than to be anything less 

honoured than your wife.’ 

‘You have talked with her?’ said Gerard, suddenly; 
* when and where ? ’ 

‘ I found her in the churchyard one afternoon, and we 
had a little quiet talk together.’ 

‘I understand; just enough to make her unhappy, 
and absurdly sensitive upon a question which I thought 
we had settled for ever,’ retorted Geiard, angrily. ‘l)id 
she ask you to call upon me ? Are you her ambassador ?’ 

‘ No. She is only too unselfish. You do not look like 
a scoundrel, Mr. Hanley, and your conduct in this mat- 
ter is a mystery to me. •You are rich, independent. Why 
should you refuse to legalise a tie which you own has 
made you happy ? Is there any impediment ? Are you 
married already ? ’ 

‘ I have no wife but Hester.’ 

‘ But you have some reason ? ’ 

‘Yes, I have my reason — and as I do not believe in 
priestcraft or in father-confessors you must pardon me, 
Mr. Gilstone, if I refuse to explain that reason to you, a 
total stranger, whose sympathy, or whose curiosity, I 
have not invited.’ 

‘ Enough, Mr. Hanley. I am sorry for that ill-used 
young lady,about whose conscience and whose social status 
you are equally indifferent. If you should alter your 
determination and make up your mind to act as a man of 
honour, you may command me in any way or at any 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 305 


time ; but until you do so I shall not again cross your 
threshold/ 

‘ So be it — but pray bear in mind, Kector, that you 
have crossed my threshold unasked, and that you cannot 
expect me to be appalled at your threat of withholding 
an acquaintance which I never sought/ 

He rang for the servant, and himself accompanied the 
Rector to the hall door, where they parted with ceremon- 
ious politeness. 

He was angry with this stranger s intrusion upon his 
life, angry with Hester for having betrayed their secret. 
She came in from the garden directly after Mr. Gilstone’s 
departure, fluttered and pale, having seen the Rector going 
out at the gate. 

For the first time Gerard received her with a frowning 
brow, and in gloomy silence. 

' The Rector has been with you/ she said, timidly, seat- 
ing herself in her accustomed nook by the window, where 
she had her work basket and little book table. 

Gerard was slow to answer. She had time to take her 
work out of the basket, and to put in a few tremulous 
stitches before he spoke. 

' Yes, the Rector has been here — an old acquaintance 
of yours it seems.* 

‘ Not very old, Gerard. I have only spoken to him 
once in my life/ 

‘ Only once ; and in that once you contrived to make 
him acquainted with all your grievances.* 

‘ Gerard how cruelly you speak. I told him nothing — • 
nothing. He guessed that all was not well — that I was 
living a life which, in his sight, is a life of sin. Oh 
Gerard, don’t be hard upon me. I have never worried 
you with my remorse for my own weakness, but when 
that good old man talked to me so kindly, so gently — * 

‘You played the tearful Magdalen — allowed a bigoted 
old Pharisee to humiliate you by his pitying patronage — 
sent him to me to urge me to legalise our union — to 
legalise, forsooth ! As if law ever held love/ 


806 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘ I did not send him to you. I begged him not to in- 
terfere/ 

' You could at least have told me of your conversation 
with this man, and so prepare me for being sermonised.' 

‘ I could not speak of it, Gerard. There are things one 
cannot speak of.' 

She bent very low over her work to hide her tears, 
feeling instinctively that tears would be hateful to him 
in his present humour. In all the days they had spent 
together she had kept tears and sadness to herself. For 
him she had been all sunshine. 

He took two or three impatient turns in the small room, 
where the cramped space only irritated him. 

‘ Hester, are you tired of me, and our life here ? ' he 
asked, stopping suddenly in front of the window by which 
she was seated. 

‘ Tired ! Gerard, you know my life begins and ends 
with you. I have given up everything else — this world 
and the next. I have nothing to care about, nothing to 
hope for but you.' 

‘ If I were free to marry you I should need no priestly 
bidding; but I am not free. I am bound hard and fast 
by an old tie, which I cannot loosen, yet awhile at any 
rate. I may be able hereafter to free myself — without 
dishonour : or I may never be free.' 

‘ Do not speak of it, Gerard. I have asked nothing of 
you. Mr. Gilstone believed that he had a duty to do. 
He has done it. That is all.' 

Her gentle patience touched him. He seated himself 
by her side, took the work out of the unsteady hands 
which were only spoiling it, and drew her to his heart. 

‘ You are only too good to me, Hester^' he said, ‘let us 
be happy, dearest, happy in spite of the conventionalities, 
happy as Shelley and his Mary were, in the beginning of 
their union, before the law had set its seal upon the bond 
of love. Some day the law may seal our marriage — but 
it will make the bond no stronger.' 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


307 


He had not forgotten what the Rector had said of her. 
Yes, she was of the stuff of which wives are made. She 
was not the kind of woman to accept degradation easily. 
And then he told himself that there was no degradation 
in their union, that he was a fool to consider the world’s 
opinion, or be influenced by the narrow views of a village 
parson. 

After that day there was no word spoken by either 
Gerard or Hester of the Rector’s visit. He came no more 
to the Rosary, nor did anyone else in the parish call upon 
the new-comers. Perhaps the involuntary look of dis- 
tress in Mr. Gilstone’s countenance, when Mr. and Mrs. 
Hanley were again discussed at a village tea-drinking, 
may have confirmed his parishioners in their suspicions 
of evil. The old speculations were repeated, the old as- 
sertion was reiterated, to the effect that people who did 
not desire to be visited or to visit must be innately bad, 
and the Rector held his peace. He started a new subject, 
and even affected not to know that anyone had been 
talking about the Hanleys. He was sore at heart when 
he thought of the lovely and refined young creature, be- 
fore whom the future seemed so dark an outlook. 

For Hester the world was not quite what it had been 
before her conversation with the Rector. An unspeak- 
able sadness stole over her spirits when she remembered 
the bitter shame of that hour in which she found herself 
face to face with an orthodox follower of the Gospel, and 
saw her position as it looked in his eyes. A gnawing re- 
morse had fastened upon her heart. She looked back 
with sick regret to the days of poverty and hard labour, 
and the long walks through the arid streets, to the long 
hours at her sewing machine, to all the little domestic 
cares that had been needed to eke out scanty resources, 
and make her father’s life comfortable. Gladly would 
she have gone back to the drudgery could she have 
been as she was then — without fear or reproach. The 
plethora of wealth in which she lived — the flowers, the 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


nos 


frivolities, the wastefulness which she had no power to 
control shocked and pained her. She felt like an In- 
dian wife in some gorgeous zenana, helpless, hopeless, ir- 
responsible. The fact that her future was amply provid- 
ed for, a fact of which Gerard had assured her in the most 
delicate manner, gave her no satisfaction. She could not 
conceive the possibility of life when he was gone. 

She bore her burden in silence. He for whom she had 
sacrificed religion and good name never knew of those 
long watches of the night in which her thoughts were 
full of sadness. He never saw her tears or heard her 
complain of all that was painful in her position at the 
Kosary. The lovely autumn days drew in ; the harm* ny 
in red and gold and russet, which had made the autumnal 
woods lovelier than summer foliage gradually faded to 
the dull gray of winter. At every &eath of the wind 
the dead leaves came gently showering down, with sound 
as faint as a snowfall, and all the upper branches of beech 
and elm were bare, while here and there some sturdy oak 
still spread boughs of red or gold against the iron sky. 

The days were short, and far too cold for idle hours up- 
on the river. Scarcely had the wintry sun sloped toward 
the westward curve of the reedy shore when the pale 
mist of night began to creep over the meadows and along 
the river, until it slowly rose and wrapped house and 
garden in one dense cloud. Hester s tender care guard- 
ed Gerard from those river fogs with strictest watch- 
fulness, for had not he told her Dr. South s poor opinion 
of his lungs. Thus the long evenings might have hung 
heavily upon them both had they not both been students, 
for whom the longest life would have been only too 
short for the unexplored, inexhausitble world of books. 
To study the catalogues of booksellers, to read the ad- 
vertisements of books in the ‘ Athenaeum.' and to order 
every book that took his fancy made one unfailing 
source of amusement for Gerard Hillersdon, and with 
these long, quiet evenings ^Id ambitions revived. He 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


309 


would write a novel — he would write that narrative poem 
which had been simmering in his mind for years, that 
story in verse which was to have all the depth of Brown- 
ing and all the delicacy of Tennyson, all the dash, wit, and 
chic of Owen Meredith, with all the passion of Swinborne ; 
a poem which, if it suceeded, should mark a new era in 
poetry. 

He loved to talk of his unrealized dreams, and Hester 
loved to listen. Thus the wintry evenings were seldom 
too long, and Hester, seeing him happy, felt that her sac- 
rifice had not been in vain, and told herself again and 
again that her own feelings, her own existence were as 
nothing weighed against his content. 

He went up to London one bright October day, and 
saw Dr. South, who expressed himself altogether hope- 
fully. 

^ You have been taking life easily,’ he said, ‘ and the 
result is all I could wish, more than I hoped. Your heart 
is better, your lungs are stronger. We cannot give you a 
new heart, but we can make the old one wear much longer 
than I thought possible the last time I saw you. Frankly 
you were in a very bad way just then.’ 

Gerard heard this verdict with delight. So far from 
being tired of this world he had a greed of life. He 
could contemplate old age with calmness. That season 
which to the mind of youth is ordinarily a jest and yet a 
horror had for him no terrors. He could contemplate 
long years of luxurious repose, in that palace of art which 
he had built for himself, and to which every year of de- 
clining life should bring new treasures. He could think 
of himself seated among his books, his statues, pictures, 
gems, curios ; white-haired, white-bearded, wise with the 
hoarded wisdom of a long life ; a man to whom young 
men should come as they went to Protagoras, to hear 
golden words of philosophic counsel. Fate had given him 
the gold which can buy such an old age as this. He 
thought of Samuel Rogers, of Stirling Maxwell — of the 


310 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


few men who seem to have drunk the wine of life to the 
lees, and yet to have found no bitterness in the cup ; and 
he saw before him the possibility of a life as perfect as 
theirs, could but life itself hold out. That was the one 
all-absorbing desire — to keep the bond intact between 
consciousness and this clay — without which he had been 
taught to believe consciousness must cease to be. 

He went back to the Rosary after that interview with 
Dr. South happier than he had been for some time. He 
felt his youth renewed, the shadow of impending doom 
removed from his path. He was more devoted than ever 
to Hester. He told her the doctor’s opinion, and kissed 
away her tears of joy. 

In Devonshire there had been some anxiety about him. 
Mr. and Mrs. Hillersdon had returned from a long stay 
at Royat and a delightful tour in the South-west of 
France. They were now installed at the Rectory, where 
Lilian was occupied with preparations for her marriage. 

' Mother is very disappointed to hear that you are not 
coming to us before Christmas,’ wrote Lilian. ‘ She 
wants to thank you for all the pleasure your money has 
afforded her and father ; and to tell you how easy and 
luxurious our travels were made by your generous gift. 
For my part I have worlds to tell you, and I shall be un- 
happy till we meet. We stayed three days in town, for 
father to see his old friends at the clubs and to dine with 
some clerical bigwigs, and for mother and me to do our 
shopping, which was tremendous. We went on the very 
first morning to Hillersdon House, and it was a blow to 
find that you were not there or likely to be there for an 
indefinite time. Your servants were rather mysterious 
about you — servants love mystery, don’t they ? Your 
paragon housekeeper was at Brighton, your butler had 
gone for an airing in the Park. The footman did not 
know your address, but told me in the most condescend- 
ing way that our letters would be forwarded to you ; so 
I live in the hope that you will receive this letter some- 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil, 311 


where, by land or sea, in a shooting lodge in the High- 
lands, or on a Norwegian lake. 

‘ I am very unhappy about that poor girl in whose fate 
you were as much — or almost as much — interested as I 
was. I mean Hester Davenport. After having failed in 
finding you, I drove to Chelsea, hoping to find Hester. 
I wanted to take her to lunch with mother at the Alex- 
andra, and then to a picture gallery, just to make a iittle 
break in her monotonous life. But I found her rooms 
empty, and her landlady was very doleful about her. She 
left one morning at the end of July, just paid what was 
owing, put together a few things in a Gladstone bag, sent 
her landlady’s little boy for a cab, and drove off, heaven 
knows where. Her father had disappeared mysteriously 
a few days before, and the landlady thought this had up- 
set poor Hester. She was very much agitated when 
leaving, quite unlike her usual self. She gave no address, 
but a fortnight afterwards the landlady received a few 
lines from her, telling her to send any letters that might 
be waiting for her, addressed to H., at the Post Office, at 
Reading. Two of Whiteley’s men came about the same 
time with an order from Hester, packed up all her books, 
her father s clothes and belongings, in two deal cases, ad- 
dressed them to the South-Western Station, Reading, to 
be called for, and left them ready for the railway people 
to take them away. Nothing more has been heard of 
Hester or her father at their old lodgings. The landlady 
cried when she talked of them, she evidently thinks there 
is something wrong. I have a good mind to write to 
Hester, and address my letter to the Reading Post Office, 
and yet what can I say to her ? It is all so mysterious ; 
first the old man’s disappearance, and then her sudden 
fiight, for it seemed like a flight, did it not ? 

‘ Jack was very glad to see us on our return. He has 
been working hard all the summer, has had neither holi- 
day nor change of air ; but now he is coming down to 
Helmsleigh for the harvest festival, and wo are all going 


S12 The Worlds The Flesh, and The DeviU 

to be very happy. We want you to complete our happi- 
ness.’ 

Gerard destroyed this letter directly he had read it, 
knov/ing how these words of his sister would have dis- 
tressed Hester. She had spoken of Lilian very rarely, 
and he had heard the deep regret in her tone, the sorrow 
for the loss of a friendship that had been very dear, the 
hopelessness of that friendship’s renewal. Not for worlds 
would he have reminded her of the morning of her flight, 
with its agony of conflicting emotions, shame, regret, 
fond self-sacrificing love, courage to meet the worst that 
fate could bring for his sake. He could recall her face 
now in its rigid whiteness, as the cab drove up to the 
station door where he stood ready to receive her. They 
had parted only a few hours before in rosy flush of morn- 
ing; they were meeting now never to part again, Gerard 
told her, as they sat side by side in the railway car- 
riage, careless whither the train took them on their first 
journey together. 

Lilian’s letter brought back the memory of that morn- 
ing to Gerard, and with it a revival of his tenderest feel- 
ings. How gentle, how utterly unselfish she had been 
even in the despair which went with her surrender; how 
careful that he should not suffer from her remorse. He 
began to think seriously of trying to free himself from his 
promise to Edith Champion — that promise made in her 
husband’s lifetime, and of which she had said, ^ Remem- 
ber, it is an oath.’ He began to think of confessing the 
new tie with which he had bound himself, and appealing 
to her womanly generosity to release him. He thought 
of this, but as it was a thing which could be done at any 
time, he was in no haste to do it. Should new obliga- 
tions arise — should there be the promise of a child to be 
born to him — well, in that case it might be his duty to 
release himself, at any cost, from that older tie. 

Justin Jermyn dropped in frequently during these 
shortening autumnal days, always full of animal spirits, 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 313 


always with his budget of little social scandals, which 
set everybody in a ridiculous light, and offered ample 
food for laughter. What a preposterous world it seemed, 
contemplated from his standpoint, and how could anybody 
be serious about it, or care by what slow linking together 
of infinitesimals, by what processes, molecular or nebular, 
this speck in the universe had come to be the thing it is ? 
Hester hated his mocking talk, but she was glad to see 
Gerard amused within the narrow limits of the Rosary. 
Had there been no such visitor as Jermyn, he might have 
wanted to go to London oftener, perhaps. So in some 
wise she had reason to be grateful to Jermyn. 

Matt Muller, the landscape painter, to whom the 
Thames had been a gold mine, was still living on his 
house boat, despite of the autumnal mists which were 
more conducive to art than to health. He was building 
himself a cottage and painting-room on the river bank, 
and had the delightful duty of watching the bricklayers 
at their work. Jermyn oscillated between London and 
Mr. Muller s house-boat, and was always fresh and metro- 
politan, while the painter, he protested, had lapsed into a 
bovine state of being, and thought of nothing but the 
canvas on his easel, and the cottage that was slowly 
rising out of a level stretch of meadow land. 

Mr. Jermyn stayed later than usual one evening after 
dining at the Rosary. The weather had been exception- 
ally fine during the last few days. St. Lukes summer, 
as Hester said, with a faint sigh, when she heard the 
church bells pealing over the river, and remembered the 
date, the eighteenth of October, St. Luke’s Day — day 
which, in the years that were past, had seen her kneeling 
in her place at church; day which for her henceforth 
meant very little. 

She had spent the morning on tlie river with Gerard, 
tempted by the warmtli of tlie sunshine which gilded 
meadow and islet. They had stayed out till the edge of 
dusk, and, creeping slowly home in their punt, had found 

T 


SI 4 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


Jermyn pacing the lawn by the water, looking out for 
their return. 

' I have come to offer myself for dinner,’ he said, as he 
helped Hester out of the boat. ‘ It is ages since I have 
bored you with my society — a week at the very least — 
and I have brought you a budget of news, Gerard ; news 
not altogether tit for Mrs. Boffin,’ shaking his finger at 
Hester, ‘so I must keep it for our half-hour in your 
cozy tabagie.’ 

‘ Your half-hours in the smoking room are very long,’ 
said Hester. 

‘Their length proves that I can interest Gerard. You 
ought to be very grateful to me, Mrs. Hanley. He 
would expire of ennui in this delicious retreat if I did 
not bring him a faithful report of all the malicious 
things that are done and said in London.’ 

‘I have forgotten the meaning of the word ennui 
since I came to the Rosary,’ said Gerard; so you may 
suppress all desire to patronize us upon that score. When 
the leaves are all off the trees and the Thames begins to 
look dreary we shall take wing for the Riviera.’ 

‘ I will meet you at Monte Carlo; I am more at home 
there than anywhere,’ said Jermyn, gaily. 

‘ I doubt if we shall go to Monte Carlo.’ 

‘ Oh, yes you will. You won’t go, perhaps — you’ll 
gravitate there. It has been called the loadstone rock, 
don’t you know. It will draw you, as that rock in the 
story drew the nails out of Sinbad’s vessel. You will 
find yourself powerless before the fascination of one of 
the loveliest spots upon this earth. I shall be just as sure 
of meeting you there as Caesar’s shade was of meeting 
Brutus at Philippi.’ 

The dinner passed gaily. The lamplit table was bril- 
liant with the beauty of decay, decked out with autumn 
leaves and berries of various and most harmonious colour- 
ing, which Hester had collected that morning in a wood- 
land walk, while the world was all fresh and dewy. The 


The World y The Fleshy and The Devil, 315 


evening was so mild that the two young men were able 
to smoKe their after-dinner cigars and enjoy their after- 
dinner talk pacing up and down the gravel path in front 
of the drawing room, while Hester sat in the lamplight 
by the hearth, where a fire of pine-logs gave a show of 
cheerfulness without too much heat. She had her work 
and her books about her, and the girlish figure in the 
white gown in the brightly-furnished room made a grace- 
ful picture of home life altogether unlike that vision of 
Bohemianism and debauchery which the spinsters of Low- 
combe imagined within the walls of the Rosary. 

‘ Does Mrs. Hanley go with you to the South ? ’ inquired • 
Jermyn, after they had exhausted his stock of London 
gossip, and were lapsing into thoughtfulness. 

The night was even lovelier than the day had been; 
the sky was full of stars, and now towards ten o’clock, 
the late moon was rising round and golden from behind 
a wooded hill on the opposits shore. 

‘ Of course, did you suppose I should leave her behind ? ’ 

‘ I only suppose there is an end to all things. You have 
had a very long honeymoon.’ 

‘We are not tired of each other yet.’ 

‘ No ? ’ interrogatively, ‘ and poor Mrs. Champion, whom 
the world declares you are to marry directly she is out of 
her weeds. It will be rather rough upon her if you marry 
anyone else.’ 

‘ That is a matter for the lady’s consideration and mine 
— not for yours.’ 

‘ I apologise. After all, the chief aim in this life is to be 
happy, and so long as you are happy with the lady 
yonder — a most lovely and amiable creature ’ 

‘ For God’s sake hold your tongue. You mean kindly 
to us both, 1 daresay — but every word you say increases 
my irritation.’ 

‘ Mr dear Hillersdon, how sensitive you are. Strange 
that a position which seems to have secured your happi- 
ness should not bear discussion — even with an intimate 
friend.’ 


31 G The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


Gerard turned upon his heel, and went back to the 
house, Jermyn following him, and the two young men 
spent the rest of the evening in the drawing-room with 
Hester, and their talk was no longer of living people but 
of books and ideas, and of great minds that had gone out 
with the Unknown. Hester was always carried away by 
talk of this kind, carried away from remorseful brooding, 
from the consciousness of an abiding sorrow. In that 
shadowy world of speculative thought all painful feelings 
merged in the one great mystery, what we are and whither 
we are going; whether that individual existence, so 
agonisingly distinct to-day, shall to-morrow merge and 
melt into the infinitesimal life which builds the coral reef 
and recomposes the earth we tread on. 

Such conversation always left her in deepest melancholy. 
Yet she took a morbid pleasure in them, as people do in 
books that make them cry. 

The wood fire and the lamplight had heated the low 
cottage drawing-room over much before Justin Jermyn 
left, and when he was gone, Gerard opened the window, 
and let in the cool soft air, and the wide sweep of moonlit 
sky, above a ridge of firs which bounded the landscape. 
The moon was high in the midmost heaven by this time, 
riding triumphantly amidst that glorious company of 
stars which look like her satellites. Hester and Gerard 
stood at the open window, looking at the sky and river, 
glad to be alone, albeit they had not wearied of Jermyn, 
who had a knack of being interesting upon any subject. 
They were both silent, both full of thought, glad to rest 
after the animated discussion of the last two hours. 

‘ Hark,’ said Gerard, suddenly. ‘ Some one has opened 
the garden gate. Jermyn is coming back. What can he 
want ? ’ 

Hester s ear was quicker than his. She heard a step 
upon the gravel, a feeble, dragging footstep, as of one who 
was weary unto death. 

‘ It is not his step,’ she said. ' It is someone who is old 
and feeble,’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 317 


As she spoke there came creeping out of the shadow of 
the shrubbery, and round by the angle of the house, a 
figure that had a ghastly look in the moonlight which 
silvered the face to a spectral pallor, and shone white 
upon the shabby and travel-stained clothes. It was the 
figure of an old man with ragged grey beard and tall, 
gaunt form. The bent shoulders, the slow movements, 
indicated uttermost weariness. The man came staggering 
towards the lamplit window, leaning upon his stick; he 
came closer and closer, till he was face to face with Hester, 
and then with a loud cry he lifted his stick and pointed 
at her triumphantly. 

‘ I knew it,’ he cried hysterically, * I knew it was you. 
I knew I had found you — at last — found you in the midst 
of your infamy — living in luxury, while your old father 
has been starving. Yes, by Heaven, within an ace of 
starvation — living in sin ’ 

‘Father,’ cried Hester piteously, stretching out her 
hands to him, trying to put her arms about him, ‘ father, 
you have no cause to reproach me. It was you who left 
me. I was giving you my life — would have given it you 
till my last breath — but you left me — left me without a 
word — alone and fatherless.’ 

Sobs choked her. She could say no more. She could 
only shape the words dumbly, while he thrust her from 
him with a savage gesture. 

‘ Don’t touch me,’ he cried, ‘ I renounce you — I have 
done with you ’ 

And then came one of those foul words which brand 
like red hot iron. The daughter sank in an agony of 
shame at her father’s feet — not fainting, only too keenly 
conscious of her misery. 

To be called that name — and in Gerard’s hearing. 
What could her life be ever more after this night but one 
everlasting sense of shame ? 

Her hands were clasped over her face, as she half knelt, 
half crouched, upon the ground. In those few moments 


318 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


there was time for that one thought — T am that thing 
which he has called me. And then she heard Gerard’s 
hoarse cry of rage, a blow, a groan, and her father had 
fallen like a log on the gravel path beside her. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


" ALAS, WHY CAM’sT THOU HITHER ? 



was not dead. Hester, in the first few min- 
utes of helpless horror, thought that the blow 
which had felled her father to the ground 
must needs be his death blow ; but it was not 
so. Her trembling fingers had loosened the 
wisp of rusty black which he had worn round 
his throat ; she had felt the beating of his heart 
under the ragged fiannel shirt. She had heard 
the stertorous breathing, which, however dreadful, at least 


indicated life. 

‘ Go for the doctor,’ she cried. ‘ Oh, for God’s sake, the 
doctor — without a moment’s loss. You have not killed 
him.’ 

‘ Killed him ! no. I only ventured to silence his foul 
tongue — the ungrateful old scoundrel. My blow was 
not murderous — but I meant to silence him, and I have 
done it,’ said Gerard, with a scornful laugh. 

It seemed such a worthless life to him, these poor dregs 
of a wasted existence. Age, poverty, drunkenness, what 
had such a man to live for, or how should such a man 
value life ? — and yet if one made an end of this wretched 
remnant of used up humanity the act would be called 
murder, and one might be hanged for it. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


819 


What should be done ? Send for a doctor ? Yes. It 
was past one o’clock, and the nearest doctor was at Low- 
combe, a mile off, a medical practitioner whose function 
it was to see a scattered population in and out of the 
world, a population dispersed at inconvenient distances, 
approachable only by accommodation roads, within a 
radius of six or seven miles. 

‘ Idl go to the gardener s cottage and try to get a mes- 
senger,’ said Gerard. ^ Don’t be frightened, Hester. J ust 
keep quiet till I come back.’ 

He ran off* towards the gardener’s house, on the other 
side of the road, where there was a kitchen garden in 
which the said gardener delighted in the cultivation of a 
vast stock of vegetables, which nobody consumed, and in 
the consumption of seeds which ought to have been 
enough to sow vegetables over all the waste ground in 
Berkshire. 

He was gone, and Hester’s fears grew more intense as 
she knelt beside the motionless form, listening to the 
labouring breath. Had he fainted, or was it some kind 
of stroke which made him unconscious ? She went into 
the house for water to bathe his temples. She tided to 
force a spoonful of brandy between the pallid lips, but 
without success. She could only watch the face, which 
the moonlight whitened, and note how it had aged and 
altered for the worse since July. Those few months had 
done the work of years. Every line had deepened, and 
there was something worse than age, the pale,^dull, sod- 
dened look of the habitual drinker. 

Gerard came back after a quarter of an hour that had 
seemed an age. 

‘ Dowling has started,’ he said, ‘ I waited till I had seen 
him go. It is nearly an hour’s walk there and back. 
Your folly in setting your face against a stable has left us 
without a messenger in a dilemma like this. Hasn’t he 
got his senses back yet ? ’ 

He stood looking down at the figure stretched at full 


320 The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil. 


length across the pathway. The path in front of the 
window was narrow, and by a happy chance Nicholas 
Davenport had fallen with his head upon the edge of the 
lawn, where the turf was thick and soft. Gerard looked 
down at him with but little compunction, a sorry figure 
in mud-stained clothes, boots split and down at heel, 
trousers torn at the knees and ragged at the edge. 

' I wonder whether the Rector of Lowcombe would 
urge me to make this man my father-in-law/ thought 
Gerard ; and then moved by some better feeling he 
stooped down to lift the heavy head from the ground, and 
with Hester s help conveyed the unconscious form into 
the drawing room, and laid it on the sofa, where Hester 
placed a down pillow under the ragged grey hair, and 
spread a plush coverlet over the motionless limbs. 

‘ Is there anything else that we can do ? ’ she asked 
piteously. 

‘ I am afraid not. I am lamentably ignorant of all 
medical treatment. If Lilian were here she would be 
ever so much more use. Tm afraid it is some kind of fit.’ 

^ Do you think he is dying ? ’ Hester asked, horror- 
stricken. 

She was kneeling by the sofa, holding her father s hand, 
which was cold and inert. 

‘ I don’t know. I know nothing, except that his fall 
just now can hardly have killed him.’ 

‘ If it had you would have been his murderer,’ she said, 
horrified at his callousness. 

‘ Would you have preferred me to stand by and hear 
him insult you — you who have been his devoted slave — 
who sacrificed all the joys of girlhood to his necessities.’ 

No, he had no compunction. This dotard had broken 
in upon their lives, bringing horror and agitation into 
their peaceful home ; this dotard to whom Hester owed 
nothing, who had been already overpaid in filial duty. 
He had no compunction, he the young man who had raised 
his hand against age and feebleness — he had no more re- 


The Worldy The Fleshy and The DeviL 321 


gret for this thing than he might have felt if he had 
kicked a strayed mongrel from his threshold. He felt 
nothing but anger against the hazard of life which had 
brought this most ineligible visitor to his retreat, and had 
perhaps made a happy union with Hester impossible 
henceforward. He knew her exaggerated ideas of duty 
to this drunken log, knew her willingness to sacrifice her- 
self. How could he tell what line she would take ? 

Legalise their union, forsooth ! Create a legal link be- 
tween himself and yonder carrion. Gro through the rest 
of his life ticketed with a disgraceful father-in-law. He 
could not stay in the room with that unconscious item of 
poor humanity. He went out and paced the gravel v alk 
from end to end, and back again, and back again, with 
monotonous repetition, waiting for the coming of the doc- 
tor, who did not come. The gardener came back in some- 
thing less than an hour, to say that the doctor had been 
summoned to a distant farmhouse, where there was a 
baby expected, and would doubtless remain there till the 
arrival of the baby. The farmhouse was nearly five 
miles on the other side of Lowcombe. All that the doc- 
tors wife could promise was that her husband should go 
to the Rosary as soon as possible after his return home. 

Thus, through the long October night there was noth- 
ing to be done but to wait and watch in patience. The 
air grew chill as morning approached, and Gerard came 
back to the drawing-room, where Hester had kept up the 
tire, and where the lamp was still burning. The old 
man’s breathing was quieter, and he seemed now to have 
sunk into a heavy sleep. 

' He will do well enough,’ said Gerard, looking at the 
unlovely sleeper. ‘There is a Providence that watches 
over drunkards.’ 

‘ Gerard, Gerard, how cruel you are ! ’ 

‘ Do you expect me to be kind ? I would have given 
thousands to keep that man out of our life.' 

‘You gave him the money that set him on the wrong 
path/ she said, 


S22 The World, The Flesh and The DevU, 


‘ I gave him money to get rid of him. I saw your life 
sacrificed to an imaginary claim. I saw your youth fad- 
ing — your beauty with a blight upon it — the blight of 
poverty and care. He was the only bar to our happiness, 
and I swept him out of my way. We have been happy, 
Hester. For pity’s sake don’t tell me you care more for 
that wreck of humanity than you care for me ! ’ 

‘ I care for him because he is my father, and has such 
need of my love.’ 

‘Ah, that is the old story. Well, you can go on caring 
for him — vicariously. We will put him in a sanitarium 
where his declining years will be made comfortable, and 
where he will be protected from his pernicious inclina- 
tions.’ 

She took no notice of this speech. She was sitting as 
she had sat through the greater part of that night, hold- 
ing her father’s hand, stooping now and then to moisten 
his forehead with a handkerchief dipped in Eau-de- 
Cologne, listening to his breathing, hoping for the day- 
light and the coming of the doctor. 

Daylight came at last, chilly and misty, and soon after 
daylight Mr. Mivor, the long-established and trusted fam- 
ily practitioner, was ushered into the room by a sleepy 
housemaid, who had heard with wonder that there was 
an invalid in the house — someone who had arrived unex- 
pectedly in the night, and for whom a bedroom was to 
be aired and made ready. Hester had gone upstairs at 
daybreak to call the servants, and had seen to the light- 
ing of a fire in this unused bedroom, a pleasant room 
enough, looking out over the shrubberied approach to the 
park-like meadows beyond. 

Mr. Mivor had heard various conversations about the 
young couple at the Rosary, but as a discreet practitioner 
and man of the world had refrained from all expression 
of opinion. He was not the less interested in this small 
social mystery, and his curiosity was considerably in- 
creased by what he saw this morning — those two pale 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


323 


white faces, the man’s sullen and heavy, the woman’s 
pinched and haggard with anxiety, and between them 
this shabby, disreputable figure, this sodden countenance, 
in which the medical eye was quick to see the indications 
of habitual intemperance. 

‘ When did the seizure occur ? ’ he asked, after he had 
made his examination. 

‘ Soon after one o’clock.’ 

‘ Was he in good health up to that time ? ’ 

‘ I don’t know. He came into the house — an unex- 
pected visitor— and dropped down almost immediately. 
He has been unconscious ever since,’ Gerard answered de- 
liberately. 

‘ And there was no exciting cause — no quarrel, no shock 
of any kind ? ’ interrogated the doctor, with a sharp look 
at the speaker. 

" It may have been a shock to him to find us — in his 
state of mind — which 1 take it was not of the clearest.’ 

‘You think he had been drinking?’ 

‘ I think it more than likely he had.’ 

Mr. Mivor asked no further questions for the time 
being. He took out a neat little leather case, which he 
was in the habit of carrying with him on his professional 
rounds, and from this closely-packed repository he select- 
ed a powder which he administered to the patient with 
his own hands, gravely watchful of him all the time. The 
old man’s eyes opened for a moment or two, only to close 
again. 

‘ You will want a trained nurse,’ he said, presently, if 
this person is to remain in your house — and, indeed, it 
would not be safe for him to be moved for some days.’ 

‘ He will remain here, and I shall help to nurse him,’ 
said Hester, who had resumed her seat by the sleeper’s 
pillow. ‘ He is my father.’ 

‘ Your father ! I did not quite understand,’ said the 
doctor, not a little surprised at this revelation, for he had 
noted the ragged flannel shirt, the greasy coat-collar, and 


824 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


the general aspect of foulness and decay which made the 
old man's presence in that room a cause of wonder. 

Her father ! The poor human wreck the father of the 
beautiful Mrs. Hanley, about whom there had been so 
many speculations ! Were some of her malevolent de- 
tractors right after all, and did she really come from the 
gutter ? 

He looked at the old man's face more thoughtfully 
than before. Bloated and disfigured as those features 
were by evil habits, they did not show the course model- 
ling which is supposed to go with low birth. The hand 
lying inert on the plush coverlet was small and finely 
formed — a hand that had never been hardened by the 
day-labourer s work. The man might once have been a 
gentleman. The capacity for intemperance is immeasur- 
able in some gentle blood. 

Mr. Mivor was not quite satisfied with the aspect of 
the case. He did not implicitly believe that story of the 
old man's entrance upon the scene, and immediate seizure. 
The stroke was a paralytic stroke, he had no doubt of 
that — but he suspected that there was something being 
kept from him, and he was all the more suspicious after 
Mrs. Hanley's admission of her relationship to the patient. 
His duty, however, lay clear before him. Whatever might 
have happened in the small hours of the night that wai 
gone — even if there had been a quarrel between the old 
man and the J^oung one — and violence of some kind, as 
he suspected, the man was not dead. His duty was to 
cure him, if he could, and his interest was to keep his 
suspicions to himself. 

‘I’ll telegraph to London for a hospital nurse, if you 
like,' he said. 

‘ Pray do,' assented Gerard, ringing the bell. ‘ I'll send 
off your telegram as soon as it is written.' 

‘ And in the meantime,' said the doctor, writing his 
message at a table where there were all the necessary’’ 
materials ready to his hand, ‘ I will help you to get the 
patient comfortably to bed.' 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 325 


^ His room is quite ready/ Hester said. ‘ I can do any- 
thing for him — I am used to waiting upon him.' 

' He has been ill before now, I suppose, then ? ' 

‘Never so bad as this. I never saw him unconscious 
as he was — after he fell/ 

Her faltering accents and the distress in her face assured 
Mr. Mivor that his conjecture was well founded, but he 
pressed her with no further questioning, and quietly, 
with the skill and gentleness of the trained practitioner, 
he assisted the scared man servant to carry the slumber- 
ing form to the room above, and assisted Hester in re- 
moving the weather-stained outer garments, and settling 
the patient comfortabty in the bed that had been aired and 
made ready. 

The fire burned cheerily in the old-fashioned grate, the 
autumn sun shone brightly outside. The room, with its 
dainty French paper and white enamelled furniture, 
looked fresh and pure as if it had been prepared for a 
bride — and there on the bed lay the victim of his own 
vice— the negative sins of sloth and intemperance, which 
are supposed to injure only the sinner. 

‘ My poor father has been wandering about the country 
till his clothes have got into this dreadful state/ Hester 
said to the doctor, apologetically, as she laid the wretched 
garments on a chair. ‘ I have a trunk full of his clothes 
in the house, ready for him when he wants them. I sup- 
pose it is my duty to tell you that he has been the victim 
of intemperate habits, induced in the first instance by 
acute neuralgia. He is very much to be pitied — you 
won’t tell anyone, will you ? ’ 

‘ Tell anyone ! My dear young lady, what do you 
think doctors are made of? Family secrets are as sacred 
for us as they are for the priesthood. It was very easy 
for me to guess that drink — and only drink — could have 
brought a gentleman to this sad pass. And now I shall 
leave you to take care of him till the nurse arrives. I 
daresay she will be here early in the afternoon. I'll look 
in before dark.' 


32G The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


When he was gone Hester examined her father s pock- 
ets. In the large outside pocket of the shooting jacket 
there was a shattered volume of Horace, containing the 
satires, the margins annotated in Nicholas Davenport’s 
small penmanship — penmanship which had retained 
something of its original microscopic neatness, in spite of 
shaken nerves and tremulous fingers. In the breast pock- 
et of the same coat there were a good many pages of 
manuscript, with many interlineations and blotchings, in- 
dicative of strenuous labour. These were all of the same 
character, metrical translations of some of the satires. 
These attempts indicated extraordinary labour, the same 
passages being reproduced over and over again — now in 
one metre, now in another — but no section of the work 
was finished. There were all the marks of a weakened 
will, directing a once powerful intellect. 

Hester gave these pages to Gerard presently when he 
came in to look at the patient. She gave them to him 
in silence, not even looking at him, lest her face should 
express too intense a reproach. The attempted trans- 
lation proved how completely the scholar had been 
duped hy the man who had deliberately tempted him 
back into the way of vice. 

‘ Poor fellow ! Yes, he tried to earn my money. He 
had the instinct of a gentleman. I was a wretch, and 
you do well to hate or to depise me. I am worthy ol 
nothing better.’ 

‘ Hate you !’ she repeated, in a low, broken voice, ‘you 
know I can never do that. You did not know what you 
were doing, or you never could have done such a cruel 
thing. You have ruined him, body and soul: but I am 
as much to blame as you. If I had been true to my sell 
and to him, I might have found him and brought him 
back.’ 

‘ Yes, if you had sacrificed youth, and love, and love- 
liness, and all fair things in this brief life for that worn- 
out hulk. No, Hester, I am not brutal, I am not heart- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 327 


less. I am sorry for him ; but he is the victim of his own 
instincts, and if the opportunity had not come from my 
hand it would have come from some other hand. I should 
be much more sorry if you had gone on with that dull, 
cruel slavery, which cut you off from all the joys that 
youth has a right to claim from life. I was mad when T 
saw your patient drudgery, your blank pleasureless days. 
I would have done a worse thing than I did to rescue 
you. And now — well — we must do the best we can for 
him,' with a reluctant glance at the sleeper. ‘ After all, 
he is no worse off than many a millionaire struck down 
in the midst of his possessions. To this complexion we 
must all come at last.' 

Hester answered nothing to his philosophical summing 
up of the situation. She took her seat by the bedside, 
watchful, ready to carry out the doctor's instructions, 
which were of the simplest. There was hardly anything 
to be done. The old man might awaken from that heavy 
and prolonged slumber in his right mind, or he might not. 
She could but wait and watch. She had drawn down 
the blinds, and sat in the subdued light — sat with folded 
hands, and lips which moved in prayer to that Personal 
God of whose non-existence her latest studies had assured 
her. But in this hour of agony and self-reproach her 
thoughts went back into the old paths ; and even in the 
Great Perhaps there was some touch of comfort. Surely 
somewhere, somehow, there must exist some spirit of love 
and pity, some mind greater than the mind of man, to 
which sorrow could make its appeal — in which despair 
could find a refuge from itself. All the peoples of the 
earth had felt the necessity for a God. Could this blind 
groping after the Great Spirit mean nothing, after all ? 
The words of her new teachers — words of power from the 
pen of men who had thought long and deeply, who had 
brought culture and pure science to bear upon the pro- 
blems of life and mind — came back to her in all their in- 
flexible assuredness — the words of men who said there 


328 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


was no God, and that the world was none the poorer tor 
the loss of Him — the words of men who said that this 
life could be full of grace and pleasantness and hope and 
love, albeit there was no better life beyond, and our be- 
loved dead were verily and for ever dead. 

And then words more familiar, words known long 
before, recurred with a quieting power, like the sound of 
sweet music, and a gush of tears loosened the iron bonds 
that seemed to hold her heart, and a i‘ay of hope stole in 
upon the darkness of her thoughts. ‘ Come unto me all 
ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest/ 


CHAPTER XXII. 

‘‘ ALAS FOR ME, THEN, MY GOOD DAYS ARE DONE.’’ 

IFE went by with dull and measured pace 
after that night of terror. Nicholas Davenport 
recovered consciousness after that prolonged, 
slumber, which may have marked the exhaus- 
tion following upon long wanderings from vil- 
lage to village, poor food, and unrestful nights in 
^ wretched beds. Hester found a rough record of his 
journeyings in his pockets, in the shape of crumpled 
tavern bills — the earliest in date a weekly account from 
the landlord of a little inn at -Abingdon. This dated as 
far back as August, and it was evident the old man had 
gone to Abingdon almost immediately upon the receipt 
of Gerard s money, it might be with some dim idea of 
being near Oxford and the Bodleian, or it might be from 
some memories of joyous days spent along the river when 
he was an under -graduate. There were several bills from 
the Abingdon Inn, spreading over a period of six or 



The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devih 329 


seven weeks, and the bills marked a downward progress 
in the drunkard’s career, each successive account showing 
a larger consumption of alcohol. The last account was 
not receipted, and it seemed but too likely that the old 
man had left in debt. 

Later bills showed a journey down the river, by land 
or water. The names of the towns or villages where he 
had stopped had a rustic sound, the signs of the inns were 
quaint and old-fashioned. The Ring of Bells. The Old 
House at Home. The First and Last. But whatever the 
sign might be, Nicholas Davenport’s bill showed that his 
chief outlay had been for alcohol — brandy in the be- 
ginning. Later, when his funds were dwindling, the 
drink had been gin. The unhappy man had chosen 
the very worst direction for his fated footsteps, for in 
those low-lying rural villages by the river side he must 
have found the atmosphere most calculated to bring back 
those neuralgic agonies which had been first the cause, 
and afterwards both cause and excuse of his intemper- 
ance. His daughter’s care and indulgence had kept the 
fiend at a distance, but he ^had gone in the very way of 
his old enemy. The last in date of all the bills was a 
scrawling memorandum from a wayside public house in 
the next village to Lowcombe, and hardly two miles from 
the Rosary. It was doubtless from the fireside gossips of 
the tap-room that Nicholas Davenport had heard that de~- 
scription of Mr. and Mrs. Hanley, and their manner of life 
which had led him to suspect their identity with Gerard 
and Hester. And now he was stretched on a sick bed, 
helpless, the power of movement lost co the long, lank 
limbs : helpless and almost imbecile. The mind was dim 
and blurred. Memory was gone, save for rare and sudden 
flashes of recollection, which had about them something 
strange and unearthly that filled his daughter with awe. 
Some sudden allusion to the past, some sharp, clear scrap 
of speech startled and scared her as if the dead had 
spoken. His imbecility seemed far less unnatural, less 


3»‘J0 Tha World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


painful even, than these transient revivifications of sense 
and memory. 

The nursing sister, a quiet, orderly person between 
thirty and forty, tall, broad-shouldered, vigorous, and 
with a hearty appetite for her meals, relieved Hester s 
watches in the invalid’s room ; and after the first week a 
male attendant was 'engaged, who would be^able to assist 
in getting the patient into the open air, so soon as he 
should be well enough to be moved into a Bath chair and 
wheeled about the gardens and lanes. Mr. Mivor ex- 
plained to Hester that her father s condition was not so 
much an illness as a state. He had little hope in any 
marked recovery, physical or mental. Mr. Davenport’s 
constitution had been destroyed by intemperance, and 
the surprise, the shock, whatever it was that brought 
about the seizure of the other night, had only precipitated 
a crisis that was, in a measure, inevitable. 

Hester’s colour came and went as she listened to his 
opinion. She lifted her eyes to the doctor with an im- 
ploring look. 

‘Tell me the truth, Mr. Mivor, the whole truth. Do 
you really and honestly think that what happened the 
other night has made hardly any difference to my father 
— that this sad state of things must have come about, 
even if — ’ 

‘ Even if there had been no agitating cause — no fall. 
Yes, I do. But the fall came before the stroke, I think, 
did it not ? ’ 

‘ Yes, I am sorry to say,’ and then in trembling accents 
she went on, ‘ I am so anxious to know the truth, to 
know the worst even, that I must tell you all. You have 
promised to keep our secrets ? ’ 

‘ Yes, yes, be assured that you can trust me.’ 

‘I left my home to spend my life with Mr. Hanley — 
left without my father’s knowledge. He was away from 
our poor lodgings at the time — and I thought that he had 
deserted me, and 1 may have cared less on that account, 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 331 


perhaps. But he had not meant to abandon me, I am 
sure. He had gone away under a misapprehension, and 
after wandering about the country he found us here — and 
he was not quite himself, I think, for he spoke to me 
cruelly — with words which no father — 

She broke down, sobbing out the bitter memory of that 
night. The worldly doctor soothed her with kindly sym- 
pathy. He had seen much of those storms of care and 
woe, anger and strife, which rage in the households whose 
outward seeming is peace and pleasantness, and he had a 
tender heart for the sorrows of his patients, especially 
for a young and beautiful woman who was expiating the 
sin of having loved too well, and who was evidently not 
of the clay of which sinners are made. 

‘ Don’t tell me any more,’ he said, ‘ there were high 
words — a little bit of a scuffle perhaps, and your father 
fell. I thought as much when I helped to undress him. 
I examined him carefully. There were two or three in- 
cipient bruises — nothing more. Such a fall would not 
have produced the seizure. That was the result of grad- 
ual decay, the decay of an alcoholised brain. Your father 
has been the chief sinner against himself.’ 

There was infinite relief in this opinion so far as Ger- 
ard was concerned, but it did not lessen the burden of her 
own remorseful conscience. She blamed herself for this 
final ruin of the life she had fought so hard to reclaim. 

One duty, one atonement, only remained, she thought, 
and that was to bear her burden, and to make this broken 
life as happy as she could. Her father knew her, and 
took pleasure in her companionship. That was much. 
He accepted his surroundings without inquiry or aston- 
ishment, and enjoyed the luxuries that were provided for 
him without asking whence they came. He saw Gerard 
without agitation, occasionally recognizing him and ad- 
dressing him by name, at other times greeting him with 
the ceremonious politeness due to a stranger. And Ger- 
ard endured his presence in the house, at first with a 


332 The World, The Flesh, and. The Devil, 


sublime patience, even going out of his way to pay the 
feeble old man little attentions when he met him in the 
garden or neighbouring lanes on sunny mornings, dragged 
along in his comfortable Bath chair, wrapped to the chin 
in fur, with Hester walking at his side. While the scene 
of that awful night, the fear that had haunted him in the 
slow hours of waiting for dawn and the doctor, were still 
fresh in his memory, a touch of pity and remorse made 
him patient of a presence which could not bring comfort 
or pleasantness into his retreat; but after a month of this 
monotony of endurance, the incubus began to oppress and 
annoy him, even albeit Hester had been careful that he 
should see as little as possible of that third inmate of the 
liouse, careful too not to worry him with any details of 
her father s life, whether he were better or worse, happy 
or sorrowful. The mere consciousness of the old man s 
existence became unbearable, and Gerard urged the need 
of placing him in a sanitarium, where, as he argued, he 
would be better cared for than in any private home. 

Hester was unhesitating in her refusal. 

‘ He could not be happier or better cared for than he is 
here,’ she said, ‘ and even if he were as well cared for, 
Avhich I doubt, 1 should not know it, and should be mis- 
erable about him.’ 

‘ That is rather a bad lookout for me. And how long 
is this kind of thing to last ? ’ 

‘ As long as he lives.’ 

‘And according to your friend, Mr. Mivor, he may last 
for years — a wreck, but a living wreck — and in that case 
he will outlast me. You cannot mean it, Hester. You 
can’t mean to abandon me for— this unlucky old man ? ’ 

‘ Abandon you ! Gerard, how could you think of it ? ’ 

‘ But I must think it. A man cannot serve two mas- 
ters. If you insist upon staying here to nurse your father 
you can’t go to the South with me, and what becomes of 
our winter in Italy ? ’ 

‘ I have been thinking of that,’ she said, with a troubled 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


333 


look. ‘ But is it really necessary for you to go to the 
South ? The weather has been so mild.’ 

‘ It generally is before Christmas. Winter doesn’t be- 
gin to show his teeth till January.’ 

‘ And you have been so well.’ 

‘Not well enough to face five months’ cold weather, or 
to disobey my doctor. He told me to winter in the South.’ 

Hester sighed, and was silent for a few moments. Oh, 
that dream of the lovely South, how sweet it had been, 
how fondly she had dwelt upon Browning’s Italian poems, 
upon all those word pictures of mountain and olive wood, 
cypress and aloe; the hill-side chapel, the mule path, the 
straggling town upon the mountain ridge, the vine shad- 
owed arbours, the sapphire lakes. And she had to re- 
nounce this fair dream, and infinitely worse, she had to 
part from Gerard. If he must go to the South they must 
be parted. 

‘I would give up anything rather than leave my 
father,’ she said, quietly. ‘ I think you must know how 
I have looked forward to seeing that lovely South, the 
countries that seem a kind of dreamland when one thinks 
of them in our prosaic world, with you, with you, Ger- 
ard ! But if you must go, you must go alone. You will 
come back to me, won’t you, dear ? The parting won’t 
be forever ? ’ 

‘ I shall come back — ^yes, of course, if I live ; but it will 
be hideously dreary for you here all the winter. Surely 
you could trust your lather to the nurse and his man. 
They are very kind to him aren’t they ? ’ 

‘ Yes, they are kind, and I am here to see that they are 
kind. How do I know what would happen if I were 
away. He is very trying sometimes. They might lose 
patience with him.’ 

‘ A sharp word would not hurt him once in a way. 
They would have to be kind to him in the main. His 
existence means bread and cheese for them, and it would 
be to their interest to make him comfortable.’ 


334 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘ That would not absolve me from my duty, Gerard. 
No; I must stay with him till the end.’ 

‘Well, you must do as you please. If you find this 
place too dismal or too damp you can take your invalid 
to Hastings or Torquay. He could travel as far as that, 
I suppose.’ 

‘ I don’t think so. Mr. Mivor said that any fatigue or 
excitement might be dangerous. He is to be kept as 
quiet as possible, and this place suits him admirably.’ 

‘ And he suits Mr. Mivor as a patient.’ 

‘ That’s a very unfair insinuation, Gerard,’ Mr. Mivor 
might come to see him every day, yet he only comes once 
in ten days. He told me the other day that he would not 
come again unless he were sent for ; but I urged him to 
come occasionally just to see that no neglect was 
arising.’ 

‘ Well, and I don’t grudge Mr. Mivor his fees. I only 
lament the change that has come into our life — the life we 
were to lead together,’ and then, touched by the unutter- 
able sadness in Hester’s face, he went on, ‘ after all, if 
the winter were very mild, I might rub on here, perhaps,’ 

‘No, no,’ she cried eagerly, ‘ you must run no risk. Oh, 
Gerard, surely you know how precious your life is to me 
— dearer than any other life. You must know that it is 
duty that keeps me here — that love would have me al- 
ways by your side.’ 

‘ I know that you have all the obstinate clinging to un- 
thankful duties which is a characteristic of your sex,’ he 
said ; ‘ or perhaps I ought to say a characteristic of good 
women. The bad ones throw their caps over the mill, 
laugh duty to scorn, and, I believe, get the best out of 
life ; the Esau’s portion, the savoury mess that they long 
for, the pleasure that comes at the nick of time. After 
all, I think that is the best.’ 

He was lying back in his low bergere beside the draw- 
ing-room fire, his arms flung up above his head, his eyes 
gazing dreamily at the flaming logs, in that brief half- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 3S5 


hour when the cold, pale winter day melts into darkness. 
He was very fond of Hester still, perfectly contented in 
her society; but he had begun to think of other things 
when he was with her, and he hated that presence of the 
old man and his attendants upstairs. One of the rooms 
that Davenport occupied was over the drawing-room, and 
Gerard could hear his footsteps crossing the floor now and 
then, the male attendant’s heavy tread, the nursing sis- 
ter’s lighter footfall, and at nightfall the wheels of the in- 
valid chair drawn slowly across the room. He knew the 
automatic routine of that sad life, the hour at which the 
patient was dressed, his meals, his airing, the business of 
getting him to bed, which happened before Hester and 
Gerard sat down to dinner. He knew all these details 
though Hester had talked of the patient so little — knew 
them by their monotonous recurrence. He thought what he 
should do with himself in the winter, how make life most 
pleasant to himself now that the spell which had bound 
him to the Rosary was broken ? He had been warned 
against all excitement. The feverish life of the dissipated 
young man was not for him. The utmost that he could 
allow himself in the way of relaxation would be the so- 
ciety of clever people, and a little quiet dinner-giving in 
his fine London house. He could oscillate between Lon- 
don and the Rosary, and Hester need feel no sense of de- 
sertion. The winter season had begun ; there would be 
plenty of pleasant people in London. His sister was to 
be married in the first week of the new year, and he 
would have to be in Devonshire for that occasion. His 
mother had written to him several times since her return 
from the continent urging him to go and see her, full of 
vague uneasiness about the life that he was leading. 

‘ If Hester owes a duty to her father I have my obliga- 
tion to my kith and kin,’ he said to himself, in that long 
reverie by the fireside. ‘I have to think of the claims of 
those who have never brought disgrace upon me as that 
old sot has done upon her.’ 


836 The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘ What are you thinking of so seriously, Gerard ? ’ Hes- 
ter asked presently, watching his face in the fitful light. 

‘ I am thinking of my mother.’ 

•The answer chilled her. His mother ; yes, he, too, had 
those who were near and dear to him — those in whose 
lives she had no part. 

‘ Your mother. Ah, how kind she was to me, and what 
ages ago that old life seems. Shall I ever see her again, 
I wonder,’ she speculated, with a sigh. 

And then the bitter thought followed upon that vague 
question: what could his mother think of her ? Disgraced, 
dishonoured, nameless ; an outcast in the sight of such a 
woman as the Rector’s wife. She counted nothing upon 
such a woman’s Christian charity. She thought of her 
only as of one who had never been touched by sin, and 
who could make no allowances. 

‘ Your sister is to be married very soon, 1 suppose ? ’ 
she said, interrogatively, after a long pause. 

^ In the first week of the year. I shall have to be at 
the wedding.’ 

‘ Of course. My heart will go with you, and all my 
warmest wishes for her happiness — even though she and 
I may never meet again.’ 

‘ Don’t harp upon that string, Hester. Let the future 
take care of itself. You are getting morbid in this odious 
house.’ 

‘ Odious ! Oh, Gerard, we have been so happy here ; I 
thought you loved this house.’ 

‘So I did, while it was full of sunshine and fiowers, and 
before you turned it into a hospital. Don’t let us quar- 
rel, Hester. I am a little hipped, and I shall be saying 
disagreeable things without meaning them. You have 
reminded me of my sister’s wedding, and that I have not 
even thought of a wedding present. What shall I give 
her? ’ 

‘ Something very handsome, of course ; but I know how 
charitable she is, and that she would rather have some- 
thing for the poor of her new parish.’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 337 


‘ She shall have anything she likes for the poor ; but 
she must have something she can look at by and by as 
her brothers gift. Cheques are the most fashionable 
offerings from rich relatives, so I shall give her a cheque ; 
but there must he something else — a service of plate, I 
think, will be best. She and Cumberland would never 
have the heart to buy silver for themselves. He would 
say, ‘ It should be melted down and given to the poor ; ' 
but Lilian will not have my gifts melted down. I will 
go up to town to-morrow and choose the service — fine 
old Georgian plate such as will not seem an anachronism 
in their old Georgian house. I know even Cumberland 
has one small vanity. He wants everything in his house 
to be of the same period as the building itself.’ 

Gerard went to London on the following morning, and 
for the first time since he had lived at the Rosary, told 
Hester not to expect his return that evening.’ 

^ I may be London for two or three days,’ he said. ‘ I 
have a good deal to do there.’ 

She made no murmur. She saw him off at the gate 
with a smile, standing waving her hand to him in the 
clear winter sunlight, and then she went slowly back to 
the house with an aching heart. 

‘ Alas, for me then, my good days are done,’ she sighed, 
like her favourite Elaine. 


338 The World, The Flesh, and Tue Devil. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

‘'HOW COULD IT END IN ANY OTHEB WAY?’' 

HE winter was mild, one of those moist and 
gentle seasons which delight the heart of the 
sportsman, but \Nhich all the sanitarians and 
ultra sensible people declare to be unhealthy, 
preaching their little sermon about want of 
aeration, and so on, Gerard was not one of these. 
He hated frost and snow, London snow most of all ; 
and he was glad of a winter which did not oblige him to 
leave Hester for any length of time. He did not want to 
spend all his days at the Rosary. She had made that 
once loved retreat in somewise a horror to him ; but he 
loved her still, and he shrank from any act that might 
seem like abandonment of her. When the year of Mrs. 
Champion’s widowhood was over he would have to face 
his difficulty, and settle with himself and with his first 
and second love as to what his life was to be. By that 
time Nicholas Davenport might be peacefully at rest, and 
the chief impediment with his union to Hester removed. 
In the meantime Hester was to him in all things as dear 
and as honoured as if she had been bound to him by the 
strongest tie the law can forge — not a very strong tie it 
must be admitted nowadays. He stayed in town for 
about ten days, choosing his sister’s wedding present, and 
seeing all the town naa to show nirn in the way of 
dramatic talent. He gave a couple of his famous break- 
fasts during those ten days, and Hillersdon House was 
put in working order, his staff of servants revised and 
corrected, and every detail of his luxurious surroundings 
carefully supervised. Valet and butler were told that 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


339 


their master would winter in England, mostly in London. 
Valet and butler were fully aware that their master had 
another establishment, and another valet and butler ; but 
he had so far been cleverer than the average master in 
keeping the secret of the second home. No one knew 
where he went when he left Hillersdon House. He who 
was so amply furnished with carriages always went to the 
station in a hansom. 

He spent Christmas at the Rosary, three days of quiet- 
ness and contentment, which were a relief after the 
breakfasts, copious talk, the picture galleries and theatres, 
the scandals, and perpetual movements of liondon. He 
would have been quite happy but for the uncomfortable 
consciousness of Nicholas Davenport’s presence in the 
room above — an existence which he could never contem- 
plate without vague pangs of remorse, lest this death in 
life were indeed his work, lest it had been that blow of 
his which shattered the feeble intellect. Hester told him 
what Mr. Mivor had said about the inevitableness of 
the attack ; but this one opinion was not enough for 
comfort. Another doctor and a better doctor might have 
told a different story. 

Hester tried to be happy in those brief days of holiday ; 
but the old unquestioning happiness, the joy that looked 
neither before nor after, was gone. The perfect union 
was broken. The ring which symbolises eternity was 
snapped into mere segments of life which she must accept 
with thankfulness. It was much that her lover had not 
deserted her. All the stories that she had ever read 
went to prove that desertion was the inevitable end of 
forbidden bliss such as she had tasted. He had shown 
her that he could live happily for more than a week 
apart from her, but there was yet no hint of desertion ; 
and he had done much in deferring his journey to Devon- 
shire till after Christmas. 

He left her on a mild sunny morning, looking far 
better than on his arrival at the cottage, Those few 


340 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


quiet days had rested him after the high living and keen 
contest of malicious wit which constituted London socie- 
ty^ or that section of it in v/hich he moved. 

Hester and he had walked in the wintry woods togeth- 
er, and enjoyed the balmy air of pine thickets, and the 
soft carpet of fallen leaves, with all the winter charm of 
chastened colouring under gray skies. He told her at 
parting that he had been very happy. 

‘ If you could only have given me a little more of your 
time it would have been better,’ he said. ‘ You are so 
severe in your recognition of a divided duty. Forgive 
me, love/ he added hastily, seeing her look of distress. 
‘You are all goodness, and I am a wretch to murmur. I 
will write to you after the wedding/ 

‘ Oh, sooner than that, Q-erard ; that would mean quite 
a week to wait ! ’ 

‘ Well, then, sooner. But you know what a bad cor- 
respondent I am. I think volumes about her I love, but 
my lazy pen refuses to write them.’ 

He was gone, and she went back to the cottage, which 
had taken a different look since the change in its master s 
habits. It no longer looked like Gerard’s home. It had 
the air of a house to which a man comes occasionally, and 
where things hardly bear the stamp of his individuality. 
The despatch-box was shut; the writing table showed no 
litter of scattered papers. The books he read oftenest — 
Swinburne, Baudelaire, Richepin, W. K. Clifford, Comte, 
Spencer, Darwin, Schopenhauer, were all in their places ; 
for these were books which Hester loved not, and she 
had not disturbed them in his absence. The rooms look- 
ed to her like the room in a widow’s house. There was 
the absence of litter, which marks the absence of man. 

She sat by the fire in the study for an hour or more 
while the invalid was being dressed and got ready for his 
morning airing, sat thinking of her own life and what 
she had made of it; a melancholy review, for since her 
conversation with Mr. Gils tone she had no longer sophis- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


841 


ticated her position.. She no longer compared herself to 
Shelley’s Mary, and believed in the rightfulness of her 
conduct. She stood convinced in her own eyes as a 
woman who had sinned. Whether the universe were or 
were not directed by a thinking mind, she had lost her 
]>lace among good women. She sat there alone at this 
Christmas season, when other women were surrounded by 
friends, and told herself that she had forfeited the right 
to womanly friendship. 

She walked beside her father s chair in the lanes for an 
hour before the brief winter day began to fade, walked at 
his side, and talked to him, and pointed out the features 
of interest in the landscape, the moving life of beast and 
bird, as she would have done for a child. She listened 
to his feeble, disconnected talk. She made him under- 
stand — as much as it was in his power to understand any- 
thing — that he was cherished and cared for. 

They did not meet many people in the lanes, but those 
whom they met took a great deal more notice of the old 
man in the Bath chair and the pensive face and girlish 
figure of his companion than Hester supposed. G-entle 
and simple were interested — the simple with an unalloyed 
friendliness towards helpless old age and filial dut}^; the 
gentle with a touch of pity for the old man, mixed with 
conflicting opinions about his daughter. 

The Curate in his soft felt hat, slouched over his brows 
as if he had been a brigand, the Misses Glendower, bent 
on district visiting, Mrs. Donovan driving her self-willed 
ponies, and crimson with the eflfort of keeping them under 
control — all these were keenly observant of Hester, and 
talked of her with a new zest at afternoon-tea. 

This appearance of an invalid father, who although 
physically and mentally a wreck, looked like a gentleman, 
was calculated to modify the village idea of Mrs. Hanley s 
position. That she should have her father to live with 
her, clad in purple and fine linen, sedulously waited 
upon and enthroned in a Bath chair which must have 


S42 TJte World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


cost as much as the family landau which Lady Isabel had 
just obtained from the repository in Baker- street, cer- 
tainly supplied an element of respectability which the 
world of Lowcombe had not looked for from Mrs. Han- 
ley. After all, people are not kites, and though they may 
tear and maul a reputation they are not altogether with- 
out tenderness for the sorrows of life. 

' I must say that young woman s attention to her 
father is one of the most touching things I have seen for 
a long time/ said Mrs. Donovan, ‘ and if I could have 
stopped my ponies yesterday morning I really think I 
should have pulled up and introduced myself to her. 
But there, you all know what my ponies are.’ 

^ Yes, Mrs. Donovan, and we all know what your driv- 
ing is/ answered Lady Isabel, who had been a famous 
whip in her youth, and who, belonging to a house that 
had always been poor, liked to show her contempt for the 
newly rich. 

' I really think one of us ought to call/ pursued Mrs. 
Donovan, ignoring the venomed shaft. ‘ I hear Mr. Han- 
ley has been a good deal away from home lately.’ 

‘ Has he ? The beginning of the end, I should think. 
Why don’t you call, Mrs. Donovan? You are broader- 
minded than I am, and you have no daughters. It can’t 
do you any harm to take notice of Mrs. Hanley ; and as 
she doesn’t know a soul in the place she may be glad to 
make your acquaintance.’ 

‘ I don’t think she could do your daughters any harm, 
Lady Isabel. She is so much younger than your girls, and 
she looks the picture of innocence.’ 

'Yes, and I have seen just such pictures in the Burling- 
ton Arcade, when I have been to my glover’s rather too 
late in the afternoon/ retorted Lady Isabel. ' You can 
please yourself, Mrs. Donovan, but I never visit people 
whose antecedents I don’t know. The fact that this young 
person behaves nicely to her imbecile father is no evidence 
of her respectability. Young persons of that class have 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 343 


their feelings as well as we have, and I daresay they are 
fonder of their own people than we are, knowing them- 
selves shut out from society/ 

After this Mrs. Donovan gave up all idea of patronising 
Mrs. Hanley. However she might hug herself with the 
thought of her investments and dividends, and the power 
which unlimited cash can give, she knew that she was 
not strong enough to fly in the face of Lowcombe society. 
It was for her to follow, and not to lead, if she wanted to 
be admitted into that inner circle, where the society was 
not suburban and rich, but county and arrogantly poor. 
These country people boasted of their dearth in these lat- 
ter days, as if it were a distinction, since poverty, for the 
most part, meant land, while wealth not unfrequently 
meant trade. Mrs. Donovan wanted to stand well with 
that choice circle which had its ramifications in the 
Peerage, and talked of Dukes and Duchesses as if the}^ 
were men and women, so she did not call upon Mrs. 
Hanley ; and thus Hester was spared that favour which 
would have been the last, worst drop in her cup of bit- 
terness. 

New Year s Eve is apt to be a saddening season, even 
in the family circle, for however cheerily we may pretend 
to take it with carpet dances and hand- shaking, or Pick- 
wickian jovialities in the way of innocent games and 
strong drinks, there is deep down in every heart the con- 
sciousness of another stage passed in the journey that 
leads down hill to that inn we all wot of, where there is 
always room for everj^body; and deep in every heart 
there is the memory of someone whom this year has 
taken away, and not all Time’s years can bring back. But 
what of New Year s Eve to the lonely girl who sat beside 
the fire through the long evening, surrounded with the 
books she loved, but with little pleasure even in their 
company. 

Such lonely evenings are by no means rare in the lives 
of wedded wives, at those seasons when the indisputable 


344 The Worlds The Fleshy and The Devil. 


rights of gun or rod keep the sportsman far away from 
the home fireside, or when the sacred demands of business 
constrain the mercantile man to over-eat himself in a city 
hall; but Hester could not forget that she was sitting 
alone to listen for the ringing of the midnight joy-bells, 
only because she was an unwedded wife. Had the bond 
been sanctified her natural place would have been with 
her husband at Helmsleigh Rectory on this vigil, which 
was a memorable one for the Rector’s household, since it 
was the eve of his only daughter’s wedding. How natural 
that she, Lilian’s friend, should have been by Lilian’s side 
to-night. How indisputable her presence had she been 
Lilian’s sister-in-law. The bitter tears sprang to her 
aching eyelids at the humiliating thought that she could 
now be no more counted worthy to enter that home where 
she had once been treated almost as a daughter of the 
house. 

She remembered a New Year’s Eve spent in that house, 
ever so many years ago, as it seems to-night, looking back, 
from a life in which all things were changed, across a 
dreary interval of misfortune and poverty. She remem- 
bered how kind everyone had been to her, full of tender- 
est compassion for her motherless youth, her burden of 
household cares. How bright and happy the rambling 
old house had looked, all the sitting-rooms gaily lighted 
with a miscellaneous collection of lamps and candles; the 
old-fashioned Christmas decorations of holly and evergreen 
in hall and dining-room; the friendly evening party, with 
a good deal of music and a little waltzing, started in an 
impromptu fashion by the youthful master of the neigh- 
bouring hounds; the inevitable recitation from the curate 
of an adjoining parish — long, dismal, intended to make 
people’s flesh creep, but only making the aged yawn and 
the youthful incline to laughter. She and Lilian had sat 
together in a corner by the piano, struggling against the 
tendency to girlish giggling, full of their own small jokes 
and depreciation of the youth of the neighbourhood, both 


The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil, 


845 


of them heart-whole and happy — happy as children are, 
without thought of the morrow. 

She had played, fresh from her German master s tuition, 
full of the Leipsic school and its traditions, had played 
and had been praised and made much of. Her playing 
was a thing of the past almost, for in the days of her 
poverty she had been without a piano, and in her new 
life she had given up all her hours to being Gerard’s Com- 
panion, and he, who cared little for classical music, had 
given her no encouragement to regain lost ground by 
severe practice. The pretty little cottage piano stood in 
its corner unopened, and now that it might have been to 
her as a companion and friend, she feared to play lest 
the sounds should disturb her father in his rooms on the 
upper floor. 

The night was clear and frosty, but not severely cold, 
and at midnight she wrapped a thick shawl about her 
and went out on to the lawn, and walked slowly up and 
down by the starlit river, listening for the bells at Low- 
combe Church. They broke out upon the stillness with 
a sudden burst of sound that thrilled her, like the spon- 
taneous cry of some Titanic soul rejoicing in some great, 
nameless good to mankind. She could not divide herself 
from the gladness in that burst of music, as the sounds 
came pealing along the water. The starlight, the darkness 
of the opposite woods, the faint ripple of the quiet river, 
the universal hush of calmest winter night through which 
the joy peal broke, were all too much for her sad, remorse- 
ful heart. She felt tliat somewhere beyond this narrow 
scene of life there must be a home and a refuge for lives 
such as hers, somewhere a friendship and a pity greater 
than human pity, which could understand, and pardon, 
and shelter. If it were not so the story that church bells, 
and running rivers, and winds that blow over woodland 
and mountain, and cathedral organs had been telling was 
a lying message to mankind, civilised and uncivilised, in 
all the ages that were gone ; and that fond hope deep in the 

y 


S4G Tlie World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


heart of man, barbarian or civilised, bond or free, was the 
cruellest hallucination that was ever engendered from 
that evolution of matter in which, according to her new 
teachers, lay all the history of mankind. 

She walked for nearly an hour in the wintry garden, 
and that quiet commune with Nature, that unconscious 
absorption of the beauty of the winter landscape gave her 
much more comfort than she had been able to find in 
Tennyson or Browning, since even ‘ In Memoriarn,' which 
was to her as a second gospel, had failed to-night to wean 
her from the thought of her own sorrows. 

‘ I wonder if he has remembered me, once, just for Oiie 
moment, in all this evening,’ she asked herself as she rose 
from her knees. 

Even when most shaken in her old faith by the new 
learning, she had never altogether lost the old habit of 
prayer. Her prayers might be vague and indistinct, the 
outpouring of a sorrowful mind, to what God she knew 
not, but for her prayer was a necessity of life. 

She was sitting at her lonely breakfast next morning, 
at a little round table by the fire in Gerard’s study, when 
something happened which cheered her with the know- 
ledge that she was not altogether forgotten. 

There came the sound of wheels on the crisp gravel 
drive, a loud ring at the door, and then the country-bred 
house-maid bounced into the room with an excited aii*, 
exclaiming, ‘ If you please, ma’am, here’s a brougham ! * 

‘ What do you mean, Pearson ? It’s the doctor, I sup- 
pose ! ’ 

* No, no, ma’am. It’s a new carriage, coachman, and all 
complete, for you. Here’s a letter the coachman brought, 
I forgot the salver, I was that taken aback,’ and the 
damsel handed a letter. 

It was from Gerard. 

^ Dearest, — Since you ,are. to spend the winter in the 
country you must have a carriage, so I send you a brough- 
am by way of a New Year’s gift. It has been built 


The World, The Flesh, and^ The Devil, 347 


specially for country work, and will be none the worse 
for much service in the lanes you are so fond of The 
coachman has admirable testimonials from previous em- 
ployers, so you may trust him fully as head of your 
stable. I have told him to engage a stable help, and to 
put all things on a proper footing. The horse was bought 
for me by a man who is a far better judge of the species 
than I am. 

‘ Be happy, my love, in the beginning of the year, and 
in many a happy year to come. 

^ Your attached^ G. 

‘P, S.— Just starting for Devonshire.' 

The letter made her almost happy, almost, but not 
quite, for kind as his words were they gave her no assur- 
ance of his love ; they did not tell her that his thoughts 
and his heart’s desire would be with her at the beginning 
of the year, the first year which had begun since they 
two had loved each other. For him it was much less of 
an epoch than it was for her, and he had easily reconciled 
himself to the idea of their separation. 

The gift vouched for his kindly thought of her, and 
was welcome on that account, but she felt that any ad- 
dition to her luxuries only accentuated the dubiousness 
of her position. 

She went out to look at the brougham, a delightful car- 
riage, small, neat, with dark, subdued colouring, and a 
perfection of comfort and elegance which in no way ap- 
pealed to the eye of the casual observer ; such a brougham 
as a leading light of the House of Commons might choose 
to convey him quickly and quietly to and fro the scene 
of his triumphs, every detail sober, simple, costly, only 
because of its perfection. The horse was a fine up-stand- 
ing brown, a patrician among horses, carrying his head 
as if he were proud of it, doing his work as if hardly 
conscious of doing it in the fulness of his power ; an 
amiable hoi*se, too, for he stooped his lordly head and 


348 


The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil. 


gave his velvet nose freely to the caressing touch of 
Hester’s hand. 

The coachman was middle-aged, and, to all appearance, 
the pink of respectability. 

‘I have only driven from the station, ma’am,’ he said. 
‘ If you’d like to drive this afternoon the horse won’t 
hurt.’ 

‘ No, no. I’ll let him rest to-day, if you please.’ 

‘ Quite the lady,’ thought the coachman, as he drove 
round to his unexplored stables, pleased with a mistress 
who showed no impatience to be sitting in her new car- 
riage and working her new horse off his legs ; evidently 
a lady to whom a brougham was no novelty. 

He had been pleased with his master, who had told 
him to order whatever was required in the way of stable 
gear and to engage a helper, all in the easy way which 
marks a master who does not look too closely into details. 

Hester was touched and comforted by this mark of 
Grerard’s regard. For a millionaire to give such gifts 
might have but little significance, yet the gift implied 
thoughtfulness, and it made her happier to know that he 
had thought of her. 

She drove in her new carriage on the following day, 
drove to Reading and made her little purchavses, all as 
modestly chosen as if she had been the wife of a curate. 
Grerard had given her a pocket-book stuffed with bank« 
notes before he left for Devonshire, but no plethora of 
money could induce her to extravagant expenditure. Her 
winter gowns, made by a Reading tailor, were of a Qua- 
ker-like plainness ; her dinner-gown of soft gray silk was 
the simplest thing in home dinner-gowns. The long seal- 
skin coat which Gerard had insisted upon ordering for her 
at the beginning of the winter was the only expensive 
garment she possessed. Just at this season she had to make 
purchases which were not for her own use, purchases of 
finest lawn and softest cambric, and pattern garments of 
daintiest form, which gave employment to her skilled 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, S49 


fingers in the long, lonely evenings of that first week in 
the New Year. 

Gerard wrote to her of his sister’s wedding in briefest 
phrases. Must he not also have remembered that had all 
been well she should have had her place, and an honoured 
place, at that family gathering, and that there must be a 
sting in anything he might write of the ceremony and of 
liis people ? 

‘They left for the Land’s End to spend a fortnight’s 
t6te-a-t^te in .a little inn on the edge of the Atlantic — a 
curious fancy for a winter honeymoon. I wanted them to 
go to Naples and Sorrento — of course at my expense — 
bub John Cumberland would not hear of a journey that 
w^ould keep him away from his parish for more than a 
fortnight, and my sister’s mind is his mind, so they are 
clambering about upon the rocks, watching the shags and 
the gulls, and listening to the roaring of the breakers — ut 
terly happy, I believe, in each other’s society, as you and 
I have been beside the dripping fringes of the willows. 
For my own part 1 can hardly imagine a January honey- 
moon. Love needs sunshine and long summer days.’ 

That last sentence haunted Hester all through the even- 
ing, as she bent over her work at her little table in the 
nook by the fire. Was love ended with a single summer ? 
Could she and Gerard ever renew the happiness of last 
summer? Alas, no ; for last summer he could hardly 
bear to be absent from her for an hour; and within the 
last few weeks he had shown her only too plainly that 
he could live without her. It was only natural, perhaps. 
Who but a romantic girl could ever think that any union 
love ever made could be one long honeymoon ? There 
was no word of returning to the Rosary in Gerard’s last 
letter. His mother insisted on his staying for another 
week at the Rectory, and he had been unable to refuse 
her. He hoped that Hester was taking long drives, get- 
ting herself plenty of new books at Miss Longley’s lib- 
rary, and keeping in good health and spirits. It is so 
easy for the absent to entertain these hopes. 


350 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


Hester did not take many drives, though the roads were 
in good condition, and the coachman came every morning 
for orders. She preferred her quiet walks beside her 
lathers Bath chair; for these at least left the satisfaction 
of duty done, and the brougham, with all its elegant lux- 
uriousness, only oppressed her with a keener sense of her 
position. She felt ashamed of driving past the Lowcombe 
people in their shabbier carriages, felt almost as if she 
could hear the hard things they said of her. 

She thought often of the good old Rector and his vain 
endeavour to set things right Ibr her, and she longed for the 
sound of his friendly voice in her solitude. But she had 
no hope that he would ever enter the Rosary again. She 
would have gladly gone to his church on the first Sunday 
of her solitude, but had not the courage to face the curious 
eyes of his congregation ; but on the second Sunday she 
felt so utterly desolate that her heart yearned to the 
church as the one shelter outside her lonely hpme where 
she could enter and feel herself unforbidden, so in the 
evening she ordered her brougham and drove to Low- 
combe, telling her coachman to stop at the entrance to the 
village, and to wait for her at the same spot when the 
service was over. She did not want to make herself con- 
spicuous at the lych gate by the flaming lamps of the 
carriage, or the beauty of her horse. She hoped to creep 
quietly to a seat in one of the aisles; but it happened 
that the pew opener was the son of the butcher who 
served the Rosary, and was eager to pay all possible hon- 
our to a good customer. With this intent he conducted 
her to a seat near the pulpit, the seat of the august Mr. 
Muschatt himself, a seat cushioned and foot-stooled in 
purple cloth, where the local landowner sat like Dives, 
and was reported never to drop more than sixpence into 
the bag, and only to drop sixpence when he had failed in 
obtaining a three-penny piece. Here, in the sight of the 
evening congregation, which included most of the gentili- 
ties of Lowcombe, where the evening service was popular, 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


351 


Hester sat in her sealskin coat and neat little sealskin 
toque and heard the evening lessens, and here she knelt 
with meekly-bent head and joined in the prayers which 
had once been interwoven with her daily life, but which 
now had a doubly impressive sound after a silence of 
half a year; while the old hymn tunes, and most of all 
the words of that evening hymn she had loved so well — 
‘Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,’ moved her almost 
to tears. Indeed it was only the consciousness of the 
lamplight on her face, and perhaps, too, the apprehension 
of furtive glances from unkind eyes, that nerved her to 
the effort which restrained her tears. 

The Rector s evening sermon was simple and practical, 
one of those plain-speaking, homely addresses which he 
loved to give of an evening — sermons in which he spoke 
to his flock as to a little family with whose needs and 
sorrows and failings he was familiar. Hester met his 
glance more than once as she looked up at him, and there 
were words, comforting words, in his sermon which she 
fancied were meant especially for her, words to lighten 
the sinner s despair and to promise the dawn of hope. 

She went home happier for that village sermon, and 
having once dared the curious looks of the congregation 
she determined to go to church regularly. The church 
was open to sinners as well as saints, to Magdalen as well 
as to Martha and Mary, to the doubter as well as to the 
believer ; and now that Gerard was no longer by to assail 
the creed in which she had been reared with all the pes- 
simist’s latest arguments, her heart went back into the old 
paths, and the Rock of Ages was once again a shelter 
and a support. 

There was daily service at Lowcombe, and to this ser- 
vice Hester went every morning during Gerard’s absence. 
It was the one break in her life, an hour of quiet prayer 
and contemplation which tranquilised her mind, sustained 
her through the monotonous duties of the day. 

Gerard reappeared after more than a fortnight’s absence* 


352 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


His native air had not improved his health. He looked 
haggard and weary, and owned that he had been intensely 
bored in the family circle. 

‘ My father and mother are model people of their kind,’ 
he said, ‘ and everything in their house goes by clockwork ; 
but so does life in a gaol, and I confess that I found the 
Rectory about as lively as Portland. There was nothing 
to do, and nothing to think about. If I had been a 
sportsman 1 should have ’been out with the hounds. 
Rural life provides nothing for men who are not sports- 
men. Such creatures are hardly believed in by the rural 
mind.’ 

Hester saw with poignant grief that after a few days 
at the Rosary Gerard was as bored as he had been in 
Devonshire. He did not hint at this weariness, but the 
signs of ennui were too obvious. He suggested inviting 
J ustin Jermyn, but Hester had grown keenly senistive 
of late, and she was so evidently distressed at the 
mention of Mr. Jermyn that Gerard did not press the 
question. 

‘I feel as if almost in every word Mr. Jermyn speaks to 
me there is a covert sneer,’ she said. 

‘Indeed, my dear child, you wrong him. — Jermyn is a 
laughing philosopher, and holds all things lightly. I 
envy him that lightness as the happiest gift Nature can 
bestow. For him, to existimeans to be amused. He lives 
only for the present hour, has a happy knack of utilising 
his friends, and does not know the meaning of care or 
sorrow.’ 

Gerard went to London soon after this little discussion 
about Jermyn, and was away till the end of the week, 
and from thenceforward he appeared at the Rosary only 
for two or three days at a time, coming at shorter or 
longer intervals, his periods of absence lengthening as the 
London season advanced. In London Jermyn was always 
with him, !his umbra, his second self. Hester discovered 
this fact from his conversation, in which J ermyn’s name 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


353 


was always recurring. He spoke of the man always with 
the same scornful lightness, as of a man for whom he had 
no real affection, but the man’s society had become a 
necessity to him. 

"Does he live upon me?’ he said once, when Hester 
gently suggested that Mr. Jermyn must be something of 
a sponge, " well, yes, I suppose he does — upon me among 
other friends — upon me perhaps more than any other 
friend. You remember how Lord Bacon used to let ser- 
vants and followers help themselves to his money, while he 
sat at his desk and wrote, seemingly unobservant. Bacon 
could not afford to do that kind of thing — his income 
wouldn’t stand it — but Jermyn is my only follower, and 
I can afford to let him profit by my existence. He does 
not sponge or borrow my money. He only wins it. I 
am fond of piquet, and when we are alone he and I play 
every night. He is by far the better player, an exceptional 
player indeed, and I daresay his winnings are good 
enough to keep him in pocket money — while I hardly feel 
myself any poorer by what I lose. If you would spend 
a little more, Hettie, I should be all the better satisfied.’ 

"You are only too generous,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘I 
have everything in the world that I want — and I have 
been more extravagant lately. Your bank notes seem to 
slip through my fingers.’ 

" That is what they were meant for. I’ll send you an- 
other parcel from London to-morrow.’ 

" No no, please do not. I have plently of money, nearly 
three hundred pounds. But are you really going back to 
town to-mori ow ? ’ 

" Really, dear. It is a case of necessity.'^ My lungs won’t 
stand this river-side atmosphere. Why don’t you think 
better of my suggestion, Hester, and let me find an- 
other home for your father. He could be well provided 
for, and you would be free to travel with me. Dr. South 
would think me mad if I were to spend February and 
March in the valley of the Thames — and even you would 
hardly wish me to run so great a risk,’ 


354 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


^ Even I. Oh, Grerard, as if your life were more pre* 
cious to any one in this world than it is to me/ 

‘ Prove your regard for me, then. Let me arrange at 
once about your father. There are plenty of respectable 
households in which he could be placed under medical 
care — and come to Italy with me.' 

'No/ she sighed, Hhat is what I should love to do, 
but I have made up my mind. While my father lives I 
will do my best to make him happy. It is the only atone- 
ment I can make ' 

Her tears finished thesentence. Gerard rose impatiently, 
and began to walk about the room. 

‘ You can hardly expect me to sacrifice my life to your 
exaggerated ideas of duty,' he said, ‘ the best part of the 
world is untrodden ground for me, and I live in an age 
which has minimised the fatigue and difficulty of travel- 
ling. A man may go round the world now more easily 
than he went from London to Paris a hundred years ago, 
and I have means to make the uttermost expenditure a 
legitimate outlay. And you would have me wither under 
such a sky as that,' he pointed to the grey fog that veiled 
garden and river, and blotted out the opposite shore, ‘ and 
restrict my movements to going backwards and forwards 
between London and this house.' 

‘ I would have you do nothing, Gerard, that you do 
not like, nothing that can possibly injure your health. 
If it is best for you to go to the South, go there without 
an hour’s unnecessary delay. I will try to make the best 
of life while you are away, and you will come back to me 
in the summer, won't you, Gerard, if you are not tired of 
me ?' 

‘ Tired of you. You know that I am not. Don’t I en- 
treat you to go with me. It is only your whims and exag- 
gerated notions I am tired of.' 

This conversation occurred in February, and it may be 
that the dull, depressing February weather, the river fog, 
and Scotch mist, the sodden grass and dripping shrubs. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


355 


and dark, leafless branches of the forest trees, counted 
for something in Gerard’s angry impatience. He went 
back to London on the following day, and he talked of 
starting for Italy, nay, indeed, made all his plans for de- 
parture, and then at the last altered his mind, and stayed 
in town. 

He reappeared at the Rosary at the end of the week, 
and it was a shock to him to find Nicholas Davenport 
installed by the drawing-room fire. There had been a 
gradual improvement in his condition since Christmas, 
and the doctor had suggested his being carried downstairs 
in his invalid chair of an afternoon, thinking that the 
change of surroundings might have good influence upon 
his mental state. His mind had certainly been brighter. 
He had taken more heed of Hester’s presence, and had 
talked to her rationally, though without memory, fre- 
quently repeating the same speeches, and asking the 
same questions over and over again. 

His presence beside the hearth made the house odious 
to Gerard, who saw in that bent and broken form the 
image of death. He retreated at once to the study, where 
Hester found him standing beside the fire in a gloomy 
reverie. 

‘ I had no hope of your coming to-day,’ she said de- 
precatingly, " or I would not have had my father brought 
down to the drawing-room. I’m afraid it hurts you to 
see him there.’ 

‘It does, Hester. The very consciousness of his pre- 
sence in the house has always been a horror to me. 
Perhaps it is because my own life hangs upon so thin a 
thread that I hate to see the image of death — and that 
living death of imbecility is death s worst form. Some- 
times I think I shall die that way myself.’ 

She soothed him, and argued away his fears about ‘ 
himself, and promised that her father’s presence should 
not again be inflicted upon him, come when he might to 
the Rosary. She would remember her divided duty, and 


$56 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


she would take care that the home which he had created 
should be made happy for him. 

‘ It is your house/ she said. ‘ I ous^ht to remember 
that.’ 

‘ There is no yours nor mine, Hettie/ he answered 
kindly. ‘All I possess of this world’s gear is at your 
service ; but I am full of fancies, and your father’s pre- 
sence chills my soul.’ 

He had come to the Rosary on Saturday afternoon, 
meaning to stay till Monday, and then go back to London 
and reconsider his migration to the South. He had been 
somewhat disheartened by being told at his club that 
there was snow in Naples, and that people were leaving 
Rome in disgust at the Arctic cold. These evil rumours, 
together with his yearning to see Hester once more, had 
delayed his departure. He had been feeling very ill all 
the week, and he told himself he must lose no time in 
getting to a balmier climate, wherever it was to be found. 

He did not return to town on Monday. He was shiver- 
ing and depressed all through Sunday, to Hester’s ex- 
treme anxiety, and on Sunday night he yielded to her 
entreaties, and allowed her to send for Mr. Mivor, who 
found all the symptoms of lung trouble. The trouble de- 
clared itself before Monday night as acute inflammation 
of the lungs, complicated by a weak heart, and for three 
weeks the patient hung between life and death, tenderly 
and devotedly nursed by Hester, who rested neither night 
nor day, and accepted only indispensable aid from the 
hospital nurse who had been sent for at the beginning of 
the attack. When Gerard was able to go down to the 
drawing-room as a convalescent, he was hardly whiter or 
more shadowy-looking than Hester herself. He was not 
ungrateful. He knew the devotion that had been given 
to him, knew that in those long nights of pain and semi- 
delirium one gentle face had always watched beside his 
bed ; yet after the flrst few days of convalescence an 
eager desire for change of surroundings took possession 


The Worlcly The Fleshy and The Devil. 


357 


of him. That illness, coming upon him suddenly, like 
the grip of demoniac claws fastening uponlungs and heart, 
had given him a terrible scare. He had been told that 
he had not a good life, but not since his childhood had he 
felt the paralysing power of acute disease, never perhaps 
until now had he realised the frailty of the thread which 
held all he knew of or believed in — this little life and its 
pleasures. In his new terror he was feverishly eager to 
get to a better climate, to Italy, to Ceylon, to India, any- 
where to escape the treacherous changes, the bitter de- 
ceptions of English weather. 

Jermyn came down to see him, at his earnest desire ; 
Jenny n played piquet with him in the long March 
evenings, and amused him with the news of the town ; 
but even this did not lessen his horror of the house that 
held Nicholas Davenport, or his ever-present terror of a 
relapse. He arranged the details of his journey with 
Jermyn; who knew exactly what kind of weather they 
were having along the Western Riviera. 

‘ You will find summer by the Mediterranean,’ he said; 

‘ March and April are the most delicious months on that 
sunny shore. Nature is loveliest there just when all the 
smart people have left for Paris or London. Leave every- 
thing to me and your valet, and all you will have to do 
when your conscientious little medical man here permits 
you to move, will be to take your seat in the train-de- 
luxe. I am going Southward for Easter myself, and I’ll 
be your travelling companion, if you like.’ 

‘ If I like ? I should be miserable alone. You will go 
as my guest, of course.’ 

‘As you please,’ replied Jermyn, shrugging his shoul- 
ders. ‘ One does not stand upon punctilio with a million- 
aire on a matter of pounds, shillings and pence. I hope 
to earn my travelling expenses by being useful to you. 
Does Mrs. Hanley go with you to the South ? ’ 

‘ No,’ Gerard answered, shortly. 

Mr. Jermyn went up to town next day to see Gerard’s 


358 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


valet, and give all instructions for the journey. He came 
back in time for dinner. 

‘ Mrs. Hanley shuns me/ J ermy n said, on this second 
occasion, he and Gerard having dined alone on both even- 
ings. ‘I hope I have not offended her.’ 

‘ She likes to be with her father.’ 

‘But surely some one told me that the old gentleman 
goes to bed at eight o’clock. She can hardly be wanted 
in his room after that hour/ 

‘ Perhaps not, but she may like to be there,’ answered 
Gerard, and then changed the conversation abruptly. 

‘ How is your friend the painter getting on with his 
house ? ’ 

‘Admirably. I believe it will be finished in two years, 
which is only a year and a quarter beyond the time speci- 
fied. His contract with the builder was for two thou- 
sand five hundred, and I fancy, in spite of all his altera- 
tions and improvements on the original design, he will 
get off for six or seven thousand. He finds his boat too 
cold a residence at this time of year, and he is staying at 
the inn were he puts me up.’ 

‘ I am sorry we have no room for you here — ’ 

‘ Don’t mention it. I doubt if you had room whether 
Mrs. Hanley would like to have me on her premises. I’m 
afraid I am no favourite of hers. It is a curious thing 
that while the ladies I meet at the Petunia and the Small 
Hours are positively devoted to me I am unfortunate in 
provoking the prejudices of the purely domestic mind — 
and Mrs. Hanley is so thoroughly domestic.’ 

‘She is the most devoted and unselfish of women. 
Her only faults are virtues in excess,’ answered Gerard, 
gravely. 

His convalescence lasted a week longer before the vil- 
lage doctor gave him leave to start for the Biviera, where 
the weather reports were now of the fairest. His illness 
had been so carefully watched by Mr. Mivor that he had 
implicit belief in that gentleman’s wisdom, and listened 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


359 


without impatience to the counsel which the doctor gave 
him on his last visit, counsel which in some points echoed 
Dr. South’s advice, given some months earlier. 

Illness is apt to b^e selfish, and in his long illness that 
self-love which had grown and strengthened ever since 
the sudden change in his fortune, took a stronger growth, 
and in the long days of convalescence, weak, depressed, 
and self-absorbed, he had brooded over Hester’s refusal to 
be his companion in his Southern wanderings, her choice 
of duty to her father rather than duty to him. Angered 
by her opposition, he began to doubt even her love, or to 
count that love a poor and paltry thing, the love that can 
consider another rather than the beloved one, the love so 
closely allied with remorse that it almost ceases to be 
love. 

A long letter from Edith Champion, which reached him 
during his last days at the Rosary, seemed to accentuate 
Hester’s coldness. Edith’s letter was glowing with hope- 
ful love. Her year of widowhood was drawing towards 
its close. June would soon be here, and then, if he still 
cared for her, their new life might begin. He had never 
been absent from her thoughts during her exile. The 
winter had seemed very long, but the dawn of spring 
meant the dawn of hope. 

The letter claimed him, and in his present mood, he 
had no desire to dispute that claim. The pale sweet face 
which looked at him in mute agony on that last March 
morning had lost its power to move him. 

‘You will come back to me, Gerard ?’ she entreated, 
clinging to him in a farewell embrace. 

‘ Perhaps ! Who knows if I may live long enough to 
see you and England again ? You have made your choice, 
Hester. The future must take care of itself. In any case 
your welfare is provided for. I have taken care of all 
material matters — for you and yours.’ 

That was all. There was no tender allusion to that 
new obligation which the summer was to bring upon 


860 The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


Hester and upon him. His heart was full of a sullen 
anger against this woman whose sacrifice just stopped 
short of blind obedience. 

Her heart turned to ice at this cold reply. Womanly 
pr ide, the pride of a deeply injured woman rose up against 
him at this last moment. Her arms dropped from his 
neck. The wan cheek that had been pressed against his 
was turned away. She followed him silently into the 
hall, and stood by in silence while he was being helped 
on with his fur-lined coat, and saw him step into the 
snug little brougham, with the dumb, tearless agony of a 
leaden despair. He looked out of the carriage window 
and waved her a smiling good-bye. The smile hurt her 
more than his harshest words could have done. 


CHAPTEK XXV. 


SING WHILE HE MAY, MAN HATH NO LONG DELIGHT."' 



ERARD and his companion started for the 
South in the train de luxe that left Charing 
Cross early in the forenoon. A sunlit passage 
across the Channel, a day of cigar smoking 
and newspaper reading, and brief intermittent 
slumbers, into which they sank, not from sleepi- 
ness, but from sheer weariness and vacuity : an 


evening at piquet, played under the vacillating light of a 
couple of reading lamps, while the train rushed south- 
ward, and then a long, weary night in which the same 
rushing sound, the same incessant oscillation, mixed itself 
with every dream, while now and again the sudden thun- 
der of a passing train started the dreamer with some 


The World y The Fleshy and The Devil, 361 


hideous image conjured instantaneously out of the dis- 
torted dream world. 

Gerard's spirits had been wild and fitful all through 
the long day and evening, now breaking out into gaiety, 
anon sinking into gloom. His strongest feeling was a 
sense of relief. He had escaped, set himself free from a 
life that had been gradually growing abhorrent to him. 
He had escaped from the house of melancholy, from the 
atmosphere of undying remorse. Most of all, he had es- 
caped from him — that living spectre, the dismal Simula 
crum of humcnity, the perpetual reminder of old age, dis- 
ease and death ; the mindless automaton whose vicinity 
made life hideous. 

‘ If duty is more to her than love she must find happi- 
ness in doing her duty,' he said to himself again and 
again, while his thoughts and fancies set themselves to 
the rhythmical beat of the engine, audible above the rush 
of the train. ' She must find happiness — doing her duty ! ' 
With every thud those common-place words repeated 
themselves. 

He had done his duty by her, he told himself. He had 
given her the option, and she had decided. Her lover or 
her father. She had chosen to stand by the earlier tie. 
Obstinately, needlessly, in opposition to all reason she 
had sacrificed herself to the father whose only claim upon 
her love at the best had been a father s name. She had 
chosen. 

Yes, he had done his duty. Hurried although his fiight 
from England had been, eager as he was to plunge into 
new scenes, to wash the bitter taste of memory out of his 
mouth with the waters of novelty, he had taken every 
step necessary to ensure Hester Davenport's material 
prosperity. His last act before leaving London had been 
to execute the deed which provided for her. She would 
be a rich woman all the days of her life — a very rich wo- 
man — able to enjoy all that wealth can offer of splendour, 
luxury, variety, the world's esteem, long after he would 
W 


362 The Worlds The Fleshy and The Devil. 


be inurned in bronze or marble, a handful of mindless 
dust. She had known the sharp sting of poverty all 
through the fairest years of her youth, and would be the 
better able to appreciate the unspeakable privileges of 
wealth. He told himself that he could afford to think of 
her without one remorseful pang ; yet he did not so think 
in the enforced vacuity of long, sleepless hours, cramped, 
with aching limbs, in his narrow berth. The pale, pa- 
thetic face, the imploring eyes, haunted him. 

He thought of the infinite consolations of her life — a 
life not measured like his miserable existence, within the 
narrow limits of a year or two. If she was alone now, 
alone with that sad phantasm of mindless humanity, she 
would have a new companion before very long — the 
sweetest, tenderest, companion woman’s life can know — 
the child who in every attribute recalls all that was best 
and dearest in the father. 

‘ If I had stayed with her to the end our parting must 
have come all the same,’ he told himself, ‘and why should 
I sacrifice my poor remnant of life to the horror of an as- 
sociation that agonises me ? One little year, perhaps, at 
the best. Only a year. Am I a wretch because I try to 
make the most of it ? ’ 

He looked at Justin Jermyn, sleeping on the other side 
of the carriage, the image of placid repose ; his breathing 
as regular as an infant’s ; his complexion delicately fair 
in the lamplight ; his parted lips rosy as the lips of a 
child. 

‘ There is enjoyment of life,' mused Gerard, ‘ and yet I 
don’t believe that man ever had an unselfish thought, or 
would hesitate at the commission of the darkest crime, if 
crime would make life pleasanter to him.’ 

He remembered how Jermyn had pushed him on to his 
alliance with Hester, and how Jermyn had urged him to 
sever the tie directly it became irksome — a man who per- 
haps had done very little evil on his own account, who 
had neither robbed the widow and orphan nor murdered 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


363 


his friend, but who went about the world giving evil ad- 
vice lightly, with a graceful carelessness, a perpetual 
happy-go-lucky air which minimised the wrongfulness in 
every transaction, and made so airy a jest of virtue that 
vice seemed non-existent. And, after all, when a man 
has filed down his beliefs to absolute materialism, when 
he says of that microcosm, himself, ‘ Thou art as the 
beasts that perish,’ it becomes very hard to define vice 
and virtue. 

In the gray dawn of the March morning Gerard envied 
his Mentor that childlike slumber, that perfect compla- 
cency and content with life. And then what physical 
advantages the man had ! Lungs sound as a bell ; muscles 
which no exercise could tire — on the river, in the gymna- 
sium, on tennis-court or golf-links alike inimitable. Yes, 
that was the glory of life— a mind without sense of good 
and evil ; a body endowed with health and strength, and 
with the promise of long life in every organ and every 
limb. Better than millions ; better than that plethora of 
gold which seemed a mockery to the man whose days 
were numbered. 

Gerard pondered on the months that he had wasted in 
the cottage by the river, living as a man might live whose 
income was under a thousand a year ; he who had the 
spending of nearly a hundred thousand in the twelve 
months if he chose ; he whose duty it was, knowing hin?*- 
self doomed to early death, to riot in gold, to wallow in 
the waters of Pactolus, to melt pearls of price in his wine, 
to achieve some mad extravagance — some folly which 
should be remembered when he was dust — almost every 
day of his life. 

For fame he had done nothing. Granted that he had 
furnished a house which in every detail testified to lavish 
wealth and original taste; but do not the wool-growers 
of Australia and the petroleum merchants of America do 
as much as that ? Clever as he fancied himself, he had 
made no new departure. He had given recherche lun- 


3G4 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


cheons, and had succeeded in having his hospitality 
spoken of as ‘ the Hillersdon table-d’hSte ^ by the witlings 
of his circle, mostly, perhaps, by those whom he did not 
entertain. He had bought some of the costliest books 
from choicest collections lately brought to the hammer. 
He had patronized some rising artists, eccentrics of the 
French and Belgian schools ; had bought statues, and had 
given exorbitant sums for carriage horses which he rarely 
used, and for a Park hack which he rode so seldom that 
every ride had been a narrow escape of sudden death. 
No; he had done very little with his money; he, who 
when penniless had pondered so often on the potentiali- 
ties of wealth and the poor use that the average million- 
aire makes of his golden opportunities ! He, Gerard Hill- 
ersdon, man of the world, thinker, dreamer, fully abreast 
with all the newest ideas, felt that his career up to this 
jjoint had been a failure. And the time that remained 
to him for achievement was so short, so short ! He was 
oppressed by a sense of hurry, an eagerness to enjoy, 
which kept his blood at fever-point. How slow was this 
so-called express ; how uncomfortable this train de luxe ? 

While the glamour of a passionate love had lasted, that 
tranquil existence by the river had been perfect happi- 
ness ; but now, by a strange perversity of mind he looked 
back upon the placid monotony of those days with a 
feeling that was near akin to disgust. It was not that 
he could contemplate Hester's image without tenderness ; 
but between the fair young face and his picture of the 
Rosary there came an image of horror — the face and form 
of the man whose shattered brain was in some wise his 
work. He forgot all that he had enjoyed of exquisite 
bliss — the dual joys of a supreme and unselfish love — in 
the nearer memory of that one hideous night, in the pain- 
ful associations of that aftertime when Hester's heart had 
been divided between love and duty. 

No train could travel fast enough to carry him away 
from those memories. They were at Monte Carlo in the 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 865 


golden light of afternoon. Only yesterday they had 
breakfasted at the London Metropole in the grey gloom 
of a March morning. To-day they were taking afternoon 
tea on a wide balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. 
Monaco’s promontory, with its twin towers, and all the 
theatrical gardens and turrets, pasteboard pinnacles, trim 
terraces, steps and balustrades of Monte Carlo. 

They were to stay here for a few days as long as the 
place amused them, and then they were to go to Florence, 
rapidly or by easy stages, as the spirit moved them. 
Jermyn’s spirits were too equable to be brightened by 
the change from London greyness to this fairy-land of 
Europe, but he flung back his head with a gay laugh, 
and sniffed the balmy air with sensuous appreciation. 

^ What a sensible man your doctor was to send you to 
the sunny South,’ he exclaimed, "and what a sensible 
man you were to invite me to be your travelling com- 
panion.’ 

" I should have been bored to death if I had come 
alone,’ answered Gerard, laughingly, " and I really think 
you are the one man whose society suits me best — though 
I have the most despicable opinion of your morals.’ 

‘My dear Hillersdon, I never set up for having any 
morals. I don’t know what morals mean. There are 
certain things that I wouldn’t do, because no mnn can do 
them and hold his head up in society. I wouldn’t cheat 
at cards for instance, or open another man’s letter. Be- 
tween men there is a kind of honesty which must be 
observed, or society couldn’t hold together. Between 
men and women : well, I think you must have found out 
long before you met me that the weaker sex is outside 
the laws of honour, and that a man who would rather 
perish than falsify his score at whist or ecarte thinks it 
a bagatelle to trick a woman out of her reputation. 
Yet, after all, in the net result of life, I believe women 
have the best of it ; and for every one whom we lead 
astray there are two who fatten upon our destruction, a 


366 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 


fact whicli you may see exemplified in this charming 
place/ 

They were at a brand new hotel, a white walled palace 
built on a height commanding sea and shore. La Con- 
daniinie lay in a sunny hollow below them, a concatena- 
tion of white villas and red roofs and narrow gardens, bal- 
conies and trellises brimming over with flowers, the rich 
purple masses of the Bougainvilliers conspicuous above 
all the rest, hedges of geranium, an avalanche of azaleas 
pouring down the hill to the lapis blue of the sea. The 
hotel was so new that it seemed to have been built and 
furnished expressly for Mr. Hillersdon s occupation. The 
courtly manager assured him that the suite of rooms re- 
served for him had never been inhabited. They were on 
the second floor, and consisted of ante room, saloon and 
dining room, bedrooms and bathroom, all upholstered in 
the same silvery greys and greens, with artistic touches 
of warmer colour here and there to accentuate the pre- 
vailing coolness. A marble loggia extended the whole 
length of the windows, and in this balmy atmosphere of 
an Italian springtide the loggia was the most delightful 
spot in which to live. 

Gerard and his companion strolled down to the rooms 
after their eight o'clock dinner. The season was nearly 
over, and there was ample space for moving about in the 
gaudy mauresque rooms, under the vivid light concen- 
trated on the green cloth, but the players gathered thickly 
round the tables, and there were plenty of people in the 
trente et quarante room, a higher class perhaps than are 
to be found in the height of the season, when the idle and 
the curious surge in and out and peer and saunter to the 
annoyance of the players who mean business and nothing 
else. 

For Gerard since his accession to fortune play had but 
little charm. While he was still poor he had hankered 
after the feverish delights of the baccarat table, and had 
frequented clubs where play ran high, venturing small 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. S67 


stakes, which when smallest were more than he could 
afford to lose — but now that loss or gain signified nothing 
to him, he needed some stimulus from without to give a 
flavour to play. 

He found that stimulus in the very atmosphere of the 
trante et quarante room, where some of the handsomest 
women and some of the quickest witted men in Paris 
crowded round the tables and elbowed him as he leant 
forward to deposit his stake. He played very carelessly, 
sometimes letting his winnings lie on the table till they 
were trebled and quadrupled before the inexorable rake 
swept them away, sometimes putting aside his gains in a 
little heap of gold and notes, which some of those lovely 
Parisian eyes watched covetously. He was more inter- 
ested in the people at the table than in the game. It 
surprised him to see how many of these people exchanged 
greetings with Justin Jermyn, who had elbowed his way 
to the front and was playing with small stakes, and an 
air of profound calculation. His careless nods, his sharp, 
sudden handshakes indicated considerable intimacy with 
those of the players by whom he was greeted. The beau- 
tiful wmmen smiled at him with an air of patronage, and 
he was equally patronizing to the keen-ej^ed men. A 
little ripple of low laughter, a flutter of whispers went 
round the table, quieted only by the authoritative hush 
of* the dealer. 

Gerard after playing languidly for half an hour, pock- 
eted his little heap of gold — the notes being re-absorbed 
by the maw of the bank, and gave himself up to observa- 
tion of the players. How beautiful some of the faces 
were — and most of them how wicked ! Here the bright 
black eyes and tilted nose of the arch and soubrette type, 
there a Roman profile with eyes and hair like Erebus, 
and there again a Saxon beauty with milky skin, pale 
eyes and yellow hair. They all hailed from Paris, these 
sirens, Lutetia being the paradise and happy hunting- 
ground of their kind ; but they were of various nation- 


S68 The ^YoTld, The Fleshy and The Devil. 


alities, including a hard-eyed and hard-headed English- 
woman, with a plain face and a perfect figure, in a per- 
fectly-fitting tailor-gown, severe and uncompromising 
amongst the sumptuous demi-toilettes of sister sirens. 
This lady was reputed to be richer than any other of the 
feminine gamesters, and was further reported to have 
refused her hand in marriage to a British Duke. But 
there was one face at the trente et quarante table which 
interested Gerard Hillersdon more than all this cosmo- 
politan beauty, the one only face which wore the typical 
expression of the gambler, a face haggard with intensity, 
pinched and worn with inward fever. It was the face of 
a small elderly woman, who sat at the end of the table 
near the dealer, and who from time to time consulted a 
perforated card, upon which she marked the progress of 
the game ; a small face with delicate, aquiline features, 
thin lips and auburn hair, slightly silvered. There was 
that in the careless attire, the shabby little black lace 
hat, of a fashion of four or five years ago, the Spanish 
lace shawl hanging in slovenly folds over one shoulder, 
ragged and rusty with long wear, the greasy black silk 
gown, which told of womanhood that had done with all 
womanly graces, and had sacrificed to one darling vice 
all the small follies, caprices and extravagances of the sex. 
Gerard became more interested in this one player than 
in the fortunes of the table, so absorbed indeed that Jer- 
myn had to touch his shoulder twice before he could 
attract his attention. 

‘ It is close upon eleven o’clock,’ said Jermyn, ‘ and 
the rooms close at eleven. What are we to do with the 
rest of the evening ? There are plenty of people here 
whom I know — shall I invite a few of them, the more 
amusing, to your rooms ? ’ 

‘ By all means. Ask them to supper. Let us make 
believe that the world is nearly two centuries younger, 
that we are living in the Regency, and that Philip of Or- 
leans is our boon companion. Your follies cannot be too 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


869 


foolish or your disposition too wild for my humour. Let 
this rock be our Brocken, and invite all the handsome 
witches of your acquaintance.’ 

‘ What, even the poor pretty girl with the red mouse in 
her mouth ? And Marguerite ; what of Marguerite ? ’ 

Gerard winced at the allusion. 

‘ My Marguerite has chosen her destiny,’ he said. ‘ If 
she were like Goethe’s Gretchen she would have chosen 
differently. Love would have been all in all with her.’ 

Gerard strolled out of the rooms alone, while Jermyn 
passed quickly and quietly from group to group, and 
briefly whispered his invitations, which were accepted 
with a nod or a smile. The people to whom these invita- 
tions were given belonged to a class which might adopt 
the motto of a certain great border clan for their own. 
Toujours pret ! Always ready for the chances of the mo- 
ment, always ready to be entertained at anybody else’s ex- 
pense, be the entertainer a Watts or a Pullinger, ripe for 
Portland, or a typical vulgarian of the Hibernian- Ameri- 
can type ; always ready for ortolans and champagne, for 
turtle and whitebait, for a saturnalia on a house-boat at 
Henley, or an orgie at the Continental. Always ready, 
ready as the vultures are ready when the scent of the 
carrion is wafted to them from afar off on the wings of 
the wind, 

Gerard strolled slowly, very slowly, up the hill to the 
big brand new caravansary where the electric light gave 
something of that elfin brilliancy which suggests the halls 
of Eblis. Slowly as he walked up that brief ascent^ care- 
fully graduated by artful windings for the footsteps of 
the weak-lunged, he was breathless when he arrived in 
the vestibule, and had to rest for a few minutes before he 
could give his orders to the manager. 

‘ A supper — all that there is of the best — for, say a 
party of twenty. Do all you can in fifteen minutes. You 
can give us those little green oysters, and plenty of them. 
Chateau Yquem, champagne, well, Heidsec or G. H. 


370 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


Mumm — but I leave the details to you and my friend 
Mr. Jermyn. Be sure there are lights and flowers in the 
loggia. And if you can get us any music worth hearing 
so much the better.’ 

‘There are the Neapolitan singers, monsieur; I dare- 
say we ca,n find them.’ 

‘ Funicoli, funicola, I suppose. C’est connu, but it will 
be better than nothing.’ 

Before the stroke of midnight he was sitting at a sup- 
per table crowded with roses and azaleas, stephanotis and 
lilies of the valley, and surrounded with the fine flower 
of the Parisian demi-monde. What a fairy ring of bright 
eyes and jewels as dazzling, of eccentric and exquisite 
toilettes, the very newest colours in fashion’s ever-chang- 
ing rainbow, artistic tea-gowns, decollete in a casual way 
which perhaps revealed more than the studied nudity of 
court and ball dress ; a general abandonment to the de- 
light of the hour ; not vicious — for even sinners are not 
always bent on sin — but unrestrained. What light laugh- 
ter ; what frank, joyous jesting ; airy sentences which in 
that particular environment sounded like epigrams, but 
which would seem witless in print ; lightest talk of the 
Paris theatres, the dramas that had succeeded. Heaven 
knows why, the brilliant comedies which had gone out 
in the foul smoke of ridicule, failure, and disappointment; 
the intrigues in the great world and the half- world ; the 
undiscovered crimes; the impending disasters. These 
careless speakers discussed everything, and decided every- 
thing, from dynasties to dressmakers. 

Gerard Hildersdon relished that light touch-and-go of 
the Celtic intellect, trained to folly, but folly spiced with 
wit. He had tried pleasure in London, and had found it 
dull and dreary. The ladies he met at the Small Hours 
were mostly so indent upon being ladies that they forgot 
to be am ising. The days were past of that fair mauvaise- 
langue who charmed the peerage, and whose sturdy Bri- 
tish bon-mots were circulated over civilised Europe, pla- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 371 


giarised in Paris, and appropriated in Vienna. He had 
sought wild gaiety, and he had found decent dulness. 
Here, the spirit of fun was not wanting, and the joyous 
laughter of his guests was loud enough to drown the voices 
of the Neapolitans in the loggia, yea, even the twanging 
of their guitars. And by and by the Neapolitans were 
pushed into a corner, and bidden to twang only waltzes, 
and those loveliest women in Paris were revolving in 
rythmical movement in the arms of the keen, clever men, 
of no particular profession, who constituted their travel- 
ling body-guard. Gerard took two or three turns with a 
lovely German girl with a creamy complexion and inno- 
cent blue eyes, who had done little more tlian smile 
sweetly upon the contest of wit and animal spirits, and 
who was said to have rince (Anglice, beggared) one of the 
wealthiest Jew bankers of Frankfort. 

He could not stand more than those two or three gen- 
tle turns to a slow three-time waltz, and he sat in the 
loggia breathless and exhausted, while the fair Lotichen 
tripped away to her friends and told them that it was 
finished with yonder cretin, who would very soon find 
his way to the Boulanger. 

‘En attendant, he has given us a very good supper,' 
replied a lady who was called Madame la Marquise in 
society, but plain Jeannett Foy in all legal documents. 
^ I hope he will leave us money for mourning. Moi je me 
trouve ravissante en noir ! ’ 

Gerard enjoyed the restful solitude of the loggia for 
half an hour, the fun within having waxed fast and furi- 
ous, and his guests being somewhat oblivious of his ex- 
istence. Yes, it was a wild whirl of mirthful abandon- 
ment, which verily suggested the witches' dance upon the 
haunted hills. There were little spurts of malignity now 
and again from the lips of beauty, which were like the 
red mouse that dropped out of the pretty girlish mouth. 
Gerard watched the chaos from the cool seclusion of the 
loggia, while the Neapolitans played languidly, and even 


372 The World, The Fleshy and The Devil. 


dozed over their guitars, with an occasional automatic 
twang. Yes, it was like a witches' Sabbath, or like a 
dance of wicked fairies in the halls of Eblis. Thank Hea- 
ven, in that gaudy, many-coloured crowd, amidst the 
flashing of diamonds and waving of plumed fans, and 
flutter of silk and lace, there was no vision of his absent 
love, that Hester whom he had loved so fondly and left 
so heartlessly. 

He pictured her in the wind-swept garden by the river, 
where the March skies were grey and gloomy, and the 
tulips were shivering in the nipping air. Why was she 
not with him here ? Why was she not sitting by his side, 
they two alone, looking out over the sleeping town, the 
colony of white villas in the crescent-shaped hollow, the 
old, old steep-roofed houses, and twin-towered cathedral, 
yonder on the jutting rock. Why were they not together 
in the star-shine of the balmy night here, as they had 
been on the starlit river last year, all in all to each other, 
knowing no duty, no claim, no religion, no law but to 
adore each other ? It was her own fault that they were 
parted. Had she been with him, these ribald revellers 
would not have been there. He would have found enough 
happiness in her sweet society. He had never changed to 
her. It was she who had changed to him. 

He was glad to have escaped from that atmosphere of 
remorse, glad to be on his way to his first love, glad most 
of all to be in this fairer world, by the side of the sea of 
deathless memories, glad to be under these brighter stars. 
Even folly was pleasant to him as a relief from too much 
thought. When his new acquaintances of the night rem- 
embered his existence so far as to come out into the loggia 
to take leave, in the faint roseate glow of approaching 
day, he invited the fairest and wittiest among them to 
breakfast with him. 

‘Not to-morrow, but to-day,’ he said; ‘Jermyn must 
devise new pleasures for us — picnics, excursions, by sea 
or mountain. I mean my brief stay here to be all holiday 
’ — if you will help me.’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 373 


He held the fair Bavarian’s hand in his, while the bright 
black eyes and white teeth of the pug-nosed Comtesse 
Rigolboche smiled down upon him. 

‘I had booked my place in the train de luxe for to- 
morrow,’ said Kigolboche, ^ but 111 change the date and 
stay here as long as you do. Well all help you to con- 
jugate the verb rigoler, rigolons, rigolez.’ 

The other voices took up the word, and the revellers 
departed to a chorus of ‘Bigolons, rigolez.’ 

Mr. Jermyn was equal to the occasion. He ordered 
dejeuners and dinners. He elicited the talents of the chef, 
he taxed the uttermost resources of the well-found hotel. 
He kept the telegraph wires employed between Monte 
Carlo and Nice, Marseilles and Paris, and choicest dainties 
were expressed along the line. Alternating with messages 
that involved life and health, fortune, all that is gravest 
in life, flew orders for Perigord pies or monster lobsters, 
Chasselas grapes, wood strawberries, oysters, ortolans, 
quails. Everything he touched was successful, and that 
week at Monte Carlo was a triumph of gourmandise and 
wild amusement. The hills echoed with the songs of the 
revellers; the sea waves danced to the music of their 
laughter as they sailed round the point of Rocque Brune, 
or lay becalmed in the sheltered Gulf of Gaspedaletti. The 
weather was exquisite — that perfect atmosphere of spring- 
time on the Riviera which makes one forget that those 
lovely shores have ever been visited by mistral, sirocco, 
rain and sleet. It was earthquake weather, Justin Jer- 
myn said, remembering how fair had been that February 
which was startled by an appalling shock of earthquake. 
He told them that this glad, beautiful shore was prepar- 
ing itself for just such another convulsion, bnt the joyous 
band laughed him to scorn. 

‘If a great pit were to open in this mountain and swal- 
low us all alive I should not care,’ said Rigolboche, emp- 
tying her glass with a piquant turn of wrist and little 
finger. ‘ J ai vecu. I have lived my life.’ 


374 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


Hillersdon sighed. How lightly this woman thought 
of life, while he counted each vanishing hour and clung 
with longing desire to the remnant of his days, and 
could not resign himself to the inevitable end, could not 
bring himself to say, " I have lived and am content to die.’ 

Lottchen, the lovely Bavarian girl, had attached herself 
to him with devotion since that first waltz when she had 
spoken of him with such brutal scorn. She had gone 
from scorn to pity, and pity had deepened in love. In 
all their revellings she tried to be near him, hung upon 
his footsteps, sought his society. Her soft, clinging ways 
touched his heart, but that heart was cold to all her 
charms. She was no more to him than a pretty cluld by 
the roadside, holding up a handful of fiowers as his car- 
riage drove by. 

Rigolboche, too, the reckless and brilliant Pdgolboche, 
who spent more money and who owed more than any 
lady of her set, tried all the keenest weapons of her wit 
upon the deux fois millionaire — ‘ des millions sterling, 
bien ensendu’ — but the wit of the Parisienne had no 
more power to fascinate Gerard Hillersdon than the 
blonde loveliness of the Bavarian. It may be that he had 
outlived the power of loving; that in his intensified 
anxiety for his own life all other personalities had become 
indifferent. If he was looking forward eagerly to re*union 
with Edith Champion it was because in that re-union he 
hoped to recover the freshness of his vanished youth, to 
become once again hopeful and full of energy, as in the 
days that were gone. 

The spirits which Jermyn had assembled served to 
amuse him, and that was much. That circle of bright 
faces shut out the dark images which were wont to press 
round him when he was alone. That festal companion- 
ship made thought impossible, and when the night of 
revelry ended, mostly on the edge of day, he was so 
thoroughly wearied that he slept more soundly than he 
had done for a long time. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 3^5 

There was a keen delight, too, in the knowledge that 
he was spending his money. The more lavish the enter- 
tainment, the more extravagant the feast, the better was 
he pleased. Rarely had the boatmen of la Condamine 
fared as they fared with him. It was his delight to see 
them rioting on the remnants of the banquet, devouring 
quails at a mouthful, swilling the costliest wines, digging 
their rude clasp-knives into pies that had come by ex- 
press train from Che vet. He flung gold pieces about with 
the lavish bounty of an Indian Rajah. The waiters at 
the hotel fawned upon him as if he had been an Emperor; 
the manager addressed him in hushed accents as if he had 
been a God. 

He spent an hour at the rooms every evening. He 
liked to see his sirens play, and he supplied them with 
the funds for their ventures at the trente et quarante 
tables. For his own part he played no more after the 
first evening. The game did not interest him, but the 
players did. So he moved about quietly, or stood in the 
background, and watched the faces in the lamp-light. 

The little elderly woman with the bright black eyes 
was generally in the same place near the dealer, her bon- 
net always badly put on and carelessly tied, her lean, un- 
gloved hands not conspicuously clean, Gerard derived a 
sinister pleasure from his observations of this woman. 
She was a study in morbid anatomy. All the forces of 
her being were concentrated upon the card table. There 
were nights when she was radiant, glorified, as if some 
supernal lamp were burning behind the dull olive com- 
plexion, and flashing through the dark Italian eyes. 
There were other nights when her face had a marble fixity, 
which would have been like death had not the unceasing 
movement of the anxious eyes made that marble mask 
more awful than death. Gerard found after a time that 
this woman was conscious of being observed, that, in 
spite of the concentration of all her faculties upon the 
gaming table; she had a restlessness under scrunity, a 


876 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


nervous apprehension which showed itself from time to 
time in birdlike glances in his direction, or in an angry 
movement of the head or shoulders. He tried, perceiving 
this, to disguise his interest, and watched her furtively, 
hoping to escape observation. He had noted that on the 
thin black cord on which her pince-nez hung she had one 
of those horned morsels of coral which the Italian peasant 
deems a charm against the evil eye, and he had noted how 
as he passed near her on two or three occasions she had 
clutched this talisman in her skinny fingers, as if autom- 
atically, moved by an instinct of self-defence. 

It was his last night at Monte Carlo, and the eve of a 
water picnic which was to signalize his departure, and 
was to be the bouquet in the series of entertainments or- 
ganised by Justin Jermyn. He had spent half an hour 
at a jeweller’s on the hill, and had chosen farewell gifts 
for the sirens, including a superb diamond hoop for the 
slim round wrist of Lottchen, in whose eyes he had seen 
tears of real tenderness yesterday when a violent access 
of his cough had left him speechless and exhausted. For 
every tear he would give her a diamond of the purest 
water, and yet think her tears poorly recompensed. 

He went down to the rooms for the last time that sea- 
son. Would he ever see them again, he wondered, at any 
season ? Were not all seasons fast closing for him, or 
would science, aided by wealth, patch up these feeble 
lungs of his, and spin out the frail thread of existence yet 
a few more years in the summer lands of earth. He 
would go anywhere; to the South Seas, to the West In- 
dies, to the Himalayas ; anywhere only to live ; and he 
told himself that Edith Champion would deem no land a 
place of exile where they two could live together. She 
had no other ties, no superior claim of duty, no exagger- 
ated filial love. Her sacrifice to her husband’s manes 
and to society’s good opinion had been made. Three- 
quarters of her year of widowhood were spent, and when 
she saw what need he had of a wife’s protecting compan- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 377 


ionship, she would gladly waive the remnant of that cere- 
monial year, and marrv him off hand at the Florentine 
Legation. 

The thought of her was in his mind to-night in the 
B.ooms. He had enjoyed his week of folly ; the sound of 
the jester s bells had been sweet in his ear ; but he was 
weary of that silvery jingle, and he looked forward with 
pleasure to the sober luxuries and splendors of his life 
with Edith. 

He was in treaty, through Justin Jermyn, for one of 
the finest yachts at Nice, and he and Lis wife would make 
a tour of all the fairest ports of the Mediterranean — ling- 
ering or hastening as caprice prompted. 

The little Italian was at her post as usual, and one fur- 
tive glance at her face told Gerard that luck had been 
against her. She had the rigid death-like look he knew 
so well. He watched— across the burly shoulders of an 
English bookmaker, returning from a race meeting in the 
Roman Campagna, and loud in his denunciation of the 
pari-mutuel system. Her bad luck continued. Stake 
after stake — ventures which had dwindled to the mini- 
mum morsel of gold — were swept away by the inexorable 
rake, until she sat with clasped hands, watching and not 
playing, too well known a habitu^ to be asked to make 
way for the players. The officials knew her ways, and 
that after sitting statue-like during two or three deals she 
would rise slowly, as one awakening from a painful dream, 
and walk quietly away — to re-appear the following night 
with money obtained no one knew how. 

Gerard felt in his breast pocket for a bundle of notes, 
and went round the table toward the back of the lady’s 
chair, intending to push the money quietly into her hand, 
and to vanish before she had recovered from her surprise 
at his action; but his intention was frustrated, for as his 
hand brushed against her shoulder she started up suddenly 
as if she had been stung, and turned upon him with eyes 
that burnt like twin coals of fire in her pallid face. The 
X 


Sts The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 


rapidity of her movement, and that burning gaze startled 
him, and he drew back in confusion. 

The lady advanced upon him as he retreated, until they 
were at some distance from the tables, away from the 
glare of the lamps. Then she stopped, fixing him with 
her fiery eyes. 

‘You do not appear to be an ardent gambler. Monsieur,' 
she said. 

‘No, Madame, 1 am not a gambler. Trente et quarante 
is utterly without interest for me.' 

‘ Why then do you haunt these rooms ? ’ 

‘I come to observe others, and to be amused.' 

‘Amused by evil passions which you do not share, 
amused as devils are amused with the sins and miseries 
of humanity. Do you not know that your presence here 
is odious, that your glances brin^ misfortune wherever 
they rest ? ' 

‘ I do not know why that should be. I have no mali- 
cious intention. I am only a looker on.' 

‘ So is death a looker on at the game of life, knowing 
that sooner or later he must win. Your presence here is 
fatal, for there is death in your face ; and since this room 
was not built for idle observers, but for business-like 
players, I believe you will be doing everybody a favour 
by absenting yourself in future. I believe I have ex- 
pressed the desire of the whole assembly.' 

She made a sweeping curtesy, drew her ragged lace 
shawl about her shoulders, and passed him on her way to 
the door. He stood with his packet of notes still in his 
hand, looking after her dumbly. 

Yet one more voice to remind him of approaching doom. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


379 



CHAPTER XXYI. 

"‘SOMR LITTLE SOUND OF UNREGARDED TEARS.” 

HE farewell festival had been arranged by 
Justin Jenny n with especial care. He had 
secured the Jersey Lily, the yacht for which 
Grerard hankered. Her owner, a rich com mer- 
man, was tired of his plaything, and was glad 
to sell it to a purchaser who did not drive a hard 
bargain. The yacht was in full working order, and 
Gerard’s first cruise was to be this water pic-nic. For 
music Mr. Jermyn was no longer content with itinerant 
Neapolitans. He had engaged some of the best perform- 
ers at the famous concerts in the Casino. But his great- 
est success was with the floral decorations. In these he 
had surpassed himself, while he had ransacked the Alger- 
ian shops on the hill for Oriental fabrics, gay with gold 
and colour, and glittering with bits of looking-glass, to 
drape cabins and poop. 

The weather was delicious, the April summer of the 
South, weather that would make even the dull flats of 
Essex or Norfolk enchanting, but which over that lovely 
land breathes an intoxicating influence, giving to age the 
gladness of youth, to weakness the pride of strength. 

Lunch was over, and the yacht was lying to in the 
roadsted of Antibes. Some of the more enterprising of 
the party had been rowed ashore, and had set out on a 
pilgrimage to the church on the height — the church with 
its curious votive pictures, showing the Madonna s merci- 
ful interposition in all the perils of life, from a headlong 
fall out of a garret window to the overturning of a bi- 
cycle. Less active and exploring spirits were content to 


rSO The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 

loll upon the deck, where low chairs and luxurious 
cushions invited slumberous ease. Fans were waving 
languidly in the golden light of afternoon, as if in time 
to the languid movement of the sails fanned by the 
western wind. On one side stretched the long level sea- 
front of Nice, with its line of white house-fronts glittering 
in the sunlight, far off to the jutting rock crowned with 
the lighthouse, and that jutting point which shuts off 
the eastern sky towards Villefrache and St. Jean and the 
promontory round which they had sailed merrily two 
hours ago. 

Gerard was in high spirits, Ue wanted to drain this 
cup of casual pleasures to the dregs. He wanted to steep 
himself in the loveliness of a coast which he might never 
look upon again. It was bliss only to stand upon the 
deck as the yacht lay at anchor and gaze upon that 
noble range of hills, with varied lights and shadows flit- 
ting across them, and that fair sub-tropical Eden in the 
middle distance where the sapphire sea kissed the low, 
level shore in all its glory of aloes and palms, orange 
groves, and gray-green olive woods, with here and there 
white walls and pinnacles gleaming amidst the green; 
enough of bliss only to breathe such an atmosphere and 
feel the inexpressible beauty of earth. 

‘ How happy you look to-day,' said Lottchen, watching 
the giver of the feast, as he leaned against the taffrail, 
and looked dreamily across the harbour to the rugged 
hill crowned with the old-world city of Vence. 

They two were alone in the bows, while the rest of the 
party were congregated in a joyous group in the stern, 
whence there came at intervals the deep, grave music of 
a 'cello, and the plaintive singing sound of violins in a 
reverie or a nocturne by Chopin, or one of Chopin's 
imitators. Pensive music, light laughter, floated towards 
these two on the summer wind. The German girl had 
followed her host when he withdrew from the merry 
band, leaving the inexhaustible Jermyn as its central 


The World y The Fleshy and The Devil. 38 1 


figure, inspiring and sustaining the general mirth with 
that joyous laugh of his, Lottchen had stolen after Ger- 
ard, uninvited ; but he was not so ungallant as to let her 
suppose that she was unwelcome. 

‘ Yes,’ he said, ' happy, but with only a sensuous hap- 
piness — the happiness of a well-cared-for cat basking and 
blinking in the sun ; happiness which vanishes at the first 
touch of thought. I am basking in the beauty of my 
Mother Earth, and if I think at all my only thought is 
that it would be sweet to live for ever — soulless, mind- 
less, immortal — amidst such scenes as these ; to live as the 
olives live on the slope of yonder hill, breathing the 
sweetness of this balmy air, feeling the glad warmth of 
this bounteous sun.’ 

'It would be very dull after a week or two,’ said 
Lottchen, 'and then what is life without love ? ’ 

' Life is much more than love. See how utterly happy 
children are in the enjoyment of the universe, and they 
know nothing of love — or at least of the passion to which 
you and I attach that name. To my fancy, this world 
would be perfect if we could be immortal and always 
children. That is the world of the eldest Gods. The 
Deities of the rivers and the mountains, water nymphs 
and wood nymphs, what were they all but grown-up 
children, drunken with the sweetness and glory of life. 
But for us, poor worms, whose every day of life brings 
us so many hours nearer to the inevitable grave, what 
can this exquisite earth, with its infinite variety of love- 
liness, be for us but a passing show ? We look, and long 
for its beauty; and even as we look it fades and melts 
into the dark. It is lovely still, but we are gone. Some- 
one else will be watching those hills next year, someone 
as young as I am, and, like me, doomed to die in his youth.’ 

Lottchen was silent — tears were streaming down the 
fair cheek when Gerard turned to look at her. 

She was lovely, engaging, sentimental — all that might 
charm a lover, but she left his heart cold as marble. 


882 


The Worldj The Flesh, and The Devil. 


Simply dressed in some soft clinging fabric of purest 
white, and with a little white sailor hat perched on the 
artistic fluffiness of her flaxen hair, she looked the image 
of girlish innocence, unspotted by the world. A man 
might easily forget all her history in such a moment as 
this, seeing the tears streaming from the large lucid eyes, 
the tender lips tremulous with emotion. 

‘ Do not waste your tears or your sympathy upon me, 
F raulein,’ Gerard said, gently, ‘ weep only for the dying 
who do not grieve for themselves. I am a lump of sel- 
fishness, and am consumed by regret for my own doom.’ 

‘You might live longer, perhaps, if you were more 
careful of yourself,’ she said. 

‘ There is no care that I would take to live. It is only 
because I know the case is hopeless that I have given 
myself up. There is nothing left for me but concentrated 
pleasures. There ought to be a melted pearl in every 
glass of wine I drink. And you have given me your 
pity — and pity from you has been sweet.’ 

‘Pity!’ she echoed, with a deep sigh. ‘Well, call it 
pity, if you like.’ 

He took a little velvet case from his pocket, and open- 
ed it in the sunlight. It seemed in that first flash of 
vivid light as if he had opened a box of sunshine more 
brilliant than those rays that danced upon the waves and 
turned the mountain clay into gold. The sunlight flash- 
ed back from the diamond circlet with rainbow glory, 
rose and emerald, violet, orange, blue. 

‘ These diamonds are for your tears, Fraulein. Will 
you vrear them now and then as a souvenir of a dying 
man ? ’ 

She held out her arm as he unclasped the diamond 
circlet. It was a lovely arm, fair as alablaster, exquisite- 
ly modelled, dazzling to look upon as the soft white fabric 
fell away from it, and arm and wrist and tapering hand 
lay there, beautiful in the sunshine. There were those 
among Mdlle. Charlotte’s admirers who declared that her 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil, 


383 


arm and hand were her crowning beauty, and nearer the 
perfection of Greek sculpture than any other hand and 
arm in Paris. 

Gerard clasped the diamond loop upon the slender wrist, 
as it lay in languid grace upon the gunwale — clasped it 
without a word, and waited with calm indifference for 
the gush of praise that usually greets such gifts ; but Lot- 
tcheffs lips were speechless. She let her wrist lie for a 
minute or so where his fingers had lightly touched it as 
he clasped the bracelet, and then with an inarticulate cry 
of grief or rage she tore the snap asunder, and fiung the 
flashing circlet into the sea. 

‘ Do 3’ou think I care anything for your diamonds, when 
3^ou care nothing for me ? ’ she cried, and then ran away 
to the flower-bedecked cabin, which had been made into 
a miniature zenana for Jermyn s bevy of sultanas, and 
emerged therefrom no more till the boat returned to Monte 
Carlo in the moonlight, minus Gerard Hillersdon, who 
landed at Antibes, in order to be in time for the express 
for Genoa, which left Nice before sundown. 

That little outbreak of Lottchen’s touched him more 
than her beauty or her tears. ‘ Queen Guinivere in little,’ 
he said to himself, as he looked after the retreating figure. 
Dick Steele best described the sex when he called wo- 
man ‘ a beautiful romantic animal.’ There is a spice of ro- 
mance in them all — even in the most experienced cocotte 
in Paris. Poor Lottchen ! ’ 

He saw her no more, for she was not among those who 
crowded to the side of the yacht to see him get into the 
dinghy. Her fair hand was not among those which waved 
him farewell as the row-boat moved swiftly towards the 
shore. 

‘Ariverdervi next week at Florence,’ cried Jermyn; 
and from the quay where he landed Gerard looked back 
and saw the Fate-reader’s lissom figure sharply defined 
against the sky as he stood on a raised portion of the deck, 
with the sirens grouped about him. 


384 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


It was in the sunset that Gerard bade farewell to the 
western Riviera, and set his face towards Genoa. Never 
can that most lovely shore look lovelier than just at 
that season of the year — than just at that hour of dying 
day. Over all the hills there lay the reflected flush from 
that crimson glory yonder behind the Esterelies; over all 
the gardens, with their rich purple-red bloom of Bougain- 
villiers, their luxury of roses white and yellow, there hung 
the glamour of sunset ; and over all the eastern sky spread 
an opaline splendour flecked with little rosy cloudlets, 
which looked like winged creatures full of exultant life, 
high up in that enchanted heaven. By every form of bay 
or inlet ; by every delicate and gracious curve that the 
sea-shore can make, by rosy rock and shadowy olive 
wood, by every entrancing change from light to colour and 
from colour to light, the train sped onwards to the dark- 
ness of fortress- crowned Ventimiglia, where there was 
nearly half an hours weariness and confusion, while Mr. 
Hillersdon’s servant did battle with the Custom House 
officeis, and transferred his master and his master s bag- 
gage to the Italian train. Then came a restless endeavour 
to slumber, more fatiguing than absolute wakefulness, and 
finally midnight and Genoa, where the traveller rested for 
a night. 

He was in Florence on the following afternoon, and the 
first idea with which that city inspired him was that he 
had left summer behind him. Some there are to whom 
the w^estern Riviera is the supreme perfection of Italian 
landscape, and to whom all other spots seem cold and 
wanting in colour as compared with that rich loveliness. 
Some there are who think that the chief glory of Italy is 
wanting when they have turned their back upon the 
Mediterranean, and that all that history, legend, and the 
fine arts can yield of interest and beauty is tame and cold 
C">mpared with the magic of that sapphire sea, the roman- 
tic variety of those rugged hills which look down upon it. 

Grerard, walking on the Lungarno on a gray March 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 385 


afternoon — March as chill and windy as he had ever 
known in Piccadilly — felt that a glamour had gone out of 
his life, and a warmth had left his veins. How dull the 
houses looked on his right hand, palatial no doubt, all that 
the soul of an architect could desire ; but are there not 
palatial houses in Piccadilly and the Kensington road ? 
How gray the river, rushing over its weirs ; how cold the 
colouring of the stone bridge ; how black the snow line of 
the Appenines. Tired as he was after the long journey 
from Genoa, he had preferred to walk to his destination, 
leaving servant and luggage to be driven to the Hotel de 
la Ville, where his rooms had been engaged for him. 

He had given Mrs. Champion no notice of his arrival. 
He wanted to take her by surprise, to see in her face that 
he had lost nothing of the love which was his a year ago. 
He had had his caprice — had given all that was warmest 
and best in his nature to another woman ; and now he 
wanted to take up the thread of life where he had drop- 
ped it a year ago, when he followed Hester Davenport 
across St. James’ Park, and felt the swift, sudden influence 
of love at first sight. He wanted to love again, in the old, 
reasonable, sober fashion; he wanted again to feel the 
mildly sentimental attachment which had sustained his 
interest in Edith Champion during the three years of her 
wedded life. 

Her house was on the side of the hill leading to San 
Miniato — a villa in a delicious garden, where the standard 
magnolias had already opened their perfume-breathing 
chalices, and where broad beds of flame-coloured tulips 
relieved the velvet monotony of the lawn, while a tall 
hedge of pink peonies shivered in the sharp March wind, 
that cutting Italian wind, which has not been ill-described 
as an east wind blowing from the west. 

It was a long walk from the station to that verdure- 
clothed hill on the southern side of the river, and Gerard 
was very weary when he arrived at the Villa Bel Visto, 
which overlooked the Boboli Gardens, and all the glory 


386 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


of Cupola and Campanile, far away to those fair hills 
northward of the city. On a sunny day the prospect 
would have cheered him with its beauty ; but under this 
cold, gray British sky even dome and tower lost something 
of their soothing influence, and Gerard regretted the sun- 
baked slopes above Monaco, where he seemed to have left 
summer behind him. 

The gates stood wide open, and there were half a dozen 
or so of carriages waiting in the semi-circular drive, and 
the hall door was also open, while a distinctly British 
footman aired his idleness on the broad flight of marble 
steps, and looked with supercilious gaze upon the opposite 
hills. Gerard passed into the house uninterrogated, and 
found himself in a vestibule, from which several doors 
opened. The light was dim, the atmosphere warm with 
the friendly glow of an olive wood fire, and beyond, 
through half open doors, he heard the sudden murmurings 
of voices, mostly feminine, which suddenly dropped into 
silence, as he approached, silence broken by the flowing 
phrases of a symphony, and then a fine baritone attack- 
ing the fashionable lament — Vorrei morir. A major-domo, 
tall, handsome, and Tuscan, stood near the lofty folding 
doors ready to announce visitors, and looked interroga- 
tively at Mr. Hillersdon, who waited in silence till the end 
of the song. 

Mrs. Champion was evidently receiving — it might be an 
afternoon party, or perhaps only her ‘ day.’ Her later 
letters had told him of a few Florentine acquaintances, 
who dropped in occasionally to cheer her solitude; but 
he was unprepared for the crowd of well-dressed women 
and distinguished-looking men amidst whom he found 
himself when Tosti’s pensive strain had died in a pro- 
longed diminuendo, and he allowed the major-domo to 
announce him. 

The afternoon light shone full upon a window which 
occupied nearly one side of the spacious drawing-room, 
and in this light Gerard saw Edith Champion standing 


Tlie World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 387 


in a group of elegant women of various nationalities 
— herself the handsomest of all, like an empress among 
her ladies of honour. She wore deepest black, but the 
heavy folds of the rich corded silk suggested grandeur 
rather than gloom, and the tulle coif, a la Marie Stuart, 
only gave a piquancy to the coronet of plaited hair which 
rose above her low, broad brow. 

She started at the sound of her lover s name, and hur- 
ried to meet him. 

^ Welcome to Florence,’ she cried, gaily, ‘ though there 
is no one in the world whom I less expected to see. Have 
you only just come V 

‘ I have been in Florence less than an hour.’ 

Her hand was in his, her lips parted in a pleased smile 
but as he came into the light of the wide window, he 
saw her expression change suddenly to a look of grieved 
surprise. He knew only too well what that look meant 
though she gave no utterance to her thoughts. A 
year ago his friends frequently told him that he looked 
ill; but of late no one had told him so. He had only 
read in their faces the evil augury which they saw in 
his face. 

' I have come upon a festive occasion,’ he said, glancing 
round at the crowd. 

‘ Oh, it is only my afternoon at home. People are so 
sociable in Florence, I have more people than usual to- 
day, because I let my friends know that Signor Amaldi 
had promised to sing. May I introduce him to you ? No 
doubt you heard of him in London the season before 
last. He makes a sensation wherever he goes.’ 

She beckoned to a small gentleman with fiery black 
eyes, and a large moustache, who lolled against the gaily 
draped piano, the centre of an admiring group, and the 
introduction was made. 

Gerard knew enough Italian to compliment the singer 
in his own language without any grave offences against 
grammatical laws, and Signor Amaldi replied effusively, 


388 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


protesting that his musical gifts were poor things, mere 
wayside weeds, which he delighted to cast under the feet 
of the loveliest and most gracious of English ladies. 

Anon the piano was taken prisoner by a cadaverous 
German, with tawny hair, as closely cropped as if he were 
a fugitive from Portland, and this gentleman expounded 
Chopin for the next half hour, amidst general inattention. 
The two English footmen were handing tea and chocolate, 
the women were whispering together in corners, and from 
an adjoining room came the tinkling of silver and glass 
at a liberally supplied buffet, at which a good many of 
the guests had congregated. But still those Hungarian 
war cries, those funereal wailings, those wild harmonies 
wailed and crashed, sobbed and sighed from the hard- 
ridden piano, while the German played on for his own 
pleasure and contentment, flinging up head and hands 
now and then in a sudden rapture during a bar of silence, 
and then coming down upon the black notes like a bird 
of prey in a volley of minor chords that startled the 
chatterers at the bufiet, the whisperers in the corners of 
the salon. 

During this musical interlude Edith and Gerard had 
time for a confidential talk. 

‘ I hardly expected to find you so gay,’ he said. 

‘ Surely you don’t call this gaiety, a little music and a 
few pleasant people who have taken pity upon my 
solitude, and forced their acquaintance upon me. Flor- 
ence is a gloomy place if one does not know people. 
There is so little to do after one has exhausted the gal- 
leries, and taken the three or four excursions which are 
de rigueur. But now you and the spring have come we 
can take all the old excursions together, bask in the sun- 
shine at Fiesole, and buy perfumery from the dear old 
monks at the Certosa. I am so glad you have come.’ 

‘ And yet you commanded me not to come until your 
year of mourning was ended. You refused to abate a 
single week.’ 


The Worldy The Fleshy and The Devil. 


389 


‘ One is glad sometimes to have one’s commands dis- 
obeyed. But tell me what made you come. Why did 
you disobey?’ > 

‘ Because my yearning for you was stronger than my 
obedience. I was utterly miserable and I longed to see 
you.’ 

‘ I am afraid you have been neglecting your health 
while I have been away,’ she said, looking at him ear- 
nestly. 

‘I have been ailing — but I am well now that I am 
with you. I look to you and Italy for healing. I have 
bought a yacht, and I am going to carry you off in it, as 
soon as the days are fair and long.’ 

‘ That will not be till June, when my year of widow- 
hood will be over.’ 

‘ I am not going to wait for June. I am not going to 
wait for May. I snap my fingers at Mrs. Grundy. If 
you can give tea-parties you can marry me. My days of 
submission and waiting are over.’ 

She laughed, and laid her hand gently upon his for a 
moment, and looked at him, and then sighed, while her 
eyes filled with sudden tears. She rose hurriedly and 
went away to talk to people who were leaving, and for 
the next quarter of an hour she was standing near the 
door bidding her friends good-bye. 

Gerard moved about the rooms restlessly, but dis- 
covered no one whom he knew. He saw people looking 
at him with that quick furtive air in which good breed- 
ing struggles with curiosity. Suddenly he found him- 
self in front of a large looking glass, and saw himself 
from head to foot in the foreground of a group of well 
dressed people, the women elegant and graceful, the men 
trim and well set-up. 

How ghastly he looked, with his cadaverous cheeks 
and sunken eyes, doubtless a natural result of that wild 
week at Monte Carlo. How shabby too, he to whom 
tailor’s bills were of no consequence, he who in the days 


S90 The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


of his poverty had been the monitor of other young men> 
distinguished for the sober perfection of his toilet. Now’ 
with his clothes hanging slackly upon his wasted frame, 
with the dust of travel still upon him, he looked an ugly 
blot upon the splendid elegance of Mrs. Champion’s 
drawing-room. He went away hurriedly, slipping out 
by the dining-room door, unseen by Edith. He meant to 
have stayed and talked with her when the guests were 
gone, but a sudden disgust at life and at himself seized 
him as he contemplated his face and figure in the tall 
Venetian glass, and the thought of a tSte-a-tete with his 
sweetheart was no longer pleasant to him. 

He was with her next morning, before her second break- 
fast, and on this occasion the glass reflected at least a 
well-dressed man. He had taken particular pains with 
his toilet, and the pale gray complet, and white silk tie, 
had all the cool freshness of spring, while from the chief 
florist’s in the Via Tornabuoni he carried a large nosegay 
of lilies of the valley and niphetos roses, as tribute to his 
mistress. 

She welcomed him delightedly, and complimented him 
upon his improved appearance. 

‘ You were really looking ill yesterday,’ she said, ‘ a 
long dusty railway journey is so exhausting. This 
morning you have renewed your youth.’ 

* And I mean to keep young, if I can. Am I over bold 
if I invite myself to breakfast.’ 

‘ I should think you very foolish if you waited for me 
to invite you. Come as often and as much as you can. 
Your knife and fork shall be laid for every meal. My 
sheep dog will be on duty again this afternoon. She has 
been at Siena with some clerical friends, who insisted 
upon carrying her off to help them with her French and 
Italian — both of which, by the way, are odious.’ 

‘ Are sheep-dogs wanted in Florence ? I have been 
taught to think that Florentine society asks no ques- 
tions.’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


391 


‘ That shows your insular ignorance. Good society in 
Florence is like good society everywhere else.’ 

‘I understand. Severe virtue, tempered by Russian 
Princesses and their cavaliere servante.’ 

They lunched t^te-S;-t§te, under the protecting eyes of 
the major-domo and the two British footmen, funereal in 
their black liveries relieved only by their powdered heads. 
There was no opportunity for confidential talk, and in- 
deed Gerard had no desire for anything better than this 
light, airy gossip about people they knew, and the ways 
and works of their own particular world, at home and on , 
the Continent, from Royalties downwards. He enjoyed 
this light talk. It seemed to him that he had left pas- 
sion, with its accompaniment of sorrow, behind him on 
the shores of the Thames. To sit by the wood fire in 
Mrs. Champion’s salon, playing with her Russian poodle, 
or turning over the newest French and German books, or 
the dainty little vellum-bound Florentine classics on the 
book-table, while the lady sat by the window and em- 
broidered flame-coloured azalias on a ground of sea green 
satin, was enough for contentment. He felt restful and 
almost happy. He was as much at ease with his fiancee 
as if they were old married people. He told her of his 
yacht, and all its luxuries and modern improvements. He 
talked of those sunny Greek isles which they were to 
visit together. 

H hope you will order some Greek gowns in your 
trousseau,’ he said ; ‘ I shall want you to dress like Sappho 
or Lesbia when we are at Cyprus or Corfu.’ 

‘ I will wear anything you like, but I think a neat 
tailor gown made of white serge would be smarter and 
more shipshape than chiton or peplum.’ 

The long afternoon was delightful to Gerard, and in 
spite of occavsional anxious glances at her lover’s face, 
Mrs. Champion seemed happy. It was pleasant to talk 
of that summer tour in the Greek Archipelago and the 
Golden Horn — how.they were to go to this place or that 


392 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


to avoid undue heat ; how they were to bask in the sun so 
long as his rays were agreeable ; and how, before the days 
shortened again, they were to decide whether they would 
winter in Algiers or in Egypt, or whether it might not 
please them to travel fui-ther afield, to Ceylon, for in- 
stance, and that strange, gorgeous, antique world of Hin- 
dostan. There was all the rapturous sensation of wealth 
in these day-dreams, the delicious knowledge that for 
these two privileged beings the cost of things could make 
no difference. 

^ Mrs. Gresham came buzzing in at tea time, and after 
having endured her chatter about the Cathedral, the mos- 
aics, the pictures, and the table d’hote at Siena — including 
the wonder of wonders in having met Mrs. Rawdon 
Smith, of Chelmsford, and her daughter — for nearly an 
hour, Gerard took his leave, promising to return next day 
to luncheon, and to drive to Fiesole with Mrs. Champion 
and her cousin in the afternoon, providing the sun shone 
which it had not done since his arrival in Florence. 

He went back to his hotel, and dined in the splendid 
solitude of a spacious salon overlooking the river and the 
hills beyond. The candles were lighted within, clusters 
of candles in two tall candelabras, which brightened the 
table, but left the angles of the room in shadow. Out- 
side the three large windows the evening was pale and 
gray, and in that soft grayness the lights of the old bridge 
and all along the quays shone golden. 

Gerard, who was seldom able to eat alone, left his meal 
and went over to one of the windows, opened the case- 
ment, and stood looking out over the marble bridge, and 
the rushing weir, and listening to the evening sounds of 
Florence, with his elbows resting on the red velvet cush- 
ion which covered the sill. First came the reveille, and 
the sound of soldiers marching in the square below, the 
trumpet call repeated and then dying away in the dis- 
tance ; and then the sonorous bell of the church of All 
Saints filled the air, calling the ^ithful to an evening 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


393 


service. It was Holy Week, and there were services 
daily and nightly in the church yonder — lighted altars, 
tapers innumerable, throngs of worshippers. 

The bell ceased after a while, and there was no sound 
but the water rushing over the weir, or occasional foot- 
steps across the empty square. Then the sonorous bell 

{ sealed out again, slow, solemn, funereal, and from a clois- 
er beside, the church issued the funeral train in all its 
Florentine awfulness, cowled monks, flaming torches, 
darkly-shrouded bier. Gerard shut the casement with 
angry suddenness, and went back to the deserted dinner 
table. He had dismissed all service. The wine flasks 
and untasted dessert alone remained in the light of the 
clustering candles. 

The solitude within, the dismal tolling of the bell with- 
out, the heavy colouring of the dimly-lighted room, 
weighed upon his spirits. He took up his hat and went 
out, the streets would be infinitely more agreeable than 
that spacious emptiness within four walls. 

The streets looked gay and bright in spite of Holy 
Week. Lighted shop windows, people passing to and fro ; 
far better this than the shadows of an empty room. There 
was neither opera nor theatre open, or he would have 
sought distraction of that kind. Great flaming posters 
announced various performances of the lowest music-hall 
type, and strictly British. From these he recoiled. He 
passed a club, but did not test its hospitality. He turned 
out of a broad street into a narrow one — a short cut to 
the Piazza Santa Maria Novella. A flare of yellow light 
tilled the further end of the street. Something festal 
doubtless in defiance of Lent. 

No, not festal, ^gain the black cowls, the flaming 
torches, the darkly shrouded bier, and suddenly from 
Santa Maria yonder the slow and solemn bell. He turned 
on his heel, retraced his steps quickly, emerged into the 
bright, broad street he had just left only to meet another 
procession. Again the cowls, the torches, and the bier, 

Y 


394 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


Florence was alive with funerals. There was nothing 
doing in the city, it seemed to him, but the burial of the 
dead. These (unerals creeping through the night, mys- 
terious under that uncertain flare of the torches, made 
death more awful. Gerard hurried away toward the 
river, overtook an empty fly, and told the man to drive 
him to Mrs. Champions villa, as fast as a Florentine horse 
would go. He felt a need of human companionship, of % 
warm, loving heart beating against his own, his own 
which seemed cold and dead as the hearts of those quiet 
sleepers who were being carried through the streets to- 
night. 

T am not fit to be alone,’ he told himself, as the light 
vehicle rattled over the bridge, and away, skirting the 
Boboli Gardens, to the Porta San Miniato, H am full of 
vague apprehensions, like a child that has been frightened 
by his nurse. What is that strange fear of children, I 
wonder, that innate horror of something unexplained, 
indescribable. What but the hereditary dread of death, 
the nameless infinite horror handed down from generation 
to generation, a fear which precedes knowledge, an in- 
stinct which antedates sense. In spite of Locke and alt 
his school, there is one innate idea, if, only one, and that 
is the fear of death. The wolf, the bear, the black man of 
the nurse’s story, are all different images of that one in- 
describable form.’ 

He was ashamed of his own weakness, which had been 
so shaken by the passing of funerals in which he had no 
interest ; but that tolling bell and those cowled monks 
had filled him with gloomy fancies. He thought of the 
plague-stricken city of the middle ages, and how death 
held his court here, while in a villa garden yonder light- 
hearted ladies listened to stories that have become part 
and parcel of the world’s poesy, and then the song which 
he had heard yesterday in Mrs. Champion’s drawing-rootn 
recurred to him — 


The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil, 


395 


‘ Vorrei morir ’ quando tramonta il sole, 

Quando sui prato dormon le viole, 

Lieta farebbe a Dio Talma ritorno, 

A primavera e sui morir del giorno. ’ 

‘ Alas, and alas ! would death be any sweeter to him 
because of a lovely sunset ora woodland starred with 
primroses and banks purple with sweet-scented violets ? 
What to him was spring or winter if he must die ? 
Whether his last breath went forth on the wings of the 
storm, like CromwelFs and Napoleon s ; or whether his 
faded eyes looked their last upon the placid loveliness of 
a summer evening in a pastoral country, could matter 
nothing to him. Death meant the end — and death was 
unspeakably cruel. 

Mrs. Champion and her cousin were sauntering in the 
garden after dinner, in the light of the Easter moon, very 
tired of each other's society, and even of the garden. 
Every life has these dim evening hours, when there 
seems to be nothing to live for. 

"How good of you/ cried Edith, recognising her lover 
in the moonlight. 

There was a fountain in a shallow marble basin sending 
up its waters from the shadow of surrounding flowers 
into the silvery light, and near the fountain a broad 
marble bench with crimson cushions spread upon it, where 
Mrs. Champion was wont to sit. She' seated herself on 
this bench to-night, and, after a few words of common- 
place, Gerard took his place at her side, while Rosa Gres- 
ham discreetly returned to the drawing-room, the poodle, 
and an unfinished novel. 

"You did not expect to see me so soon again, did you, 
Edith?' 

" I did not expect — no — but I am so much the more 
glad.' 

" I could not live without you — I felt an aching wish 
to be with someone who loves me — to feel that I have 
still some hold upon warm human life.' 


396 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


And then he told her about the three funerals in the 
streets of Florence. 

' Is it often so ? ’ he asked. ‘ Does Florence swarra 
with funerals ? * 

‘ My dear Gerard/ she exclaimed, laughingly. ‘ Three ! 
For a city of 200,000 inhabitants ? Does that mean 
much ? It is only the torchlight and the brothers of the 
Misericordia that impressed you. How superior to any- 
thing one sees in England ! So mediaeval ; so paintable ! 
But don't let us talk of funerals.' 

‘ No, indeed ! I am here to talk of something widely 
different, of a wedding — our wedding, Edith. When is it 
to be ? ' 

‘ Next June, if you like/ she answered quietly. 

‘ But I do not like. June is ages away. Who knows 
if we may live to June. The monks may be carrying us 
through the dark narrow streets in the flare of their 
torches before June. I want you to marry me to-mor- 
row — ' 

‘ Gerard, in Holy Week ! ' 

‘ What do I care for Holy week ? But if yon care, let 
us be married on Easter Monday. We can start for Spe- 
zia after the ceremony, and dine on board my yacht, in 
the loveliest harbour in Europe. We can watch that moon 
shining on the ghostly whiteness of the Carrara moun- 
tains, whiter, more picturesque, than yonder snow-peaked 
Appenines.' 

‘So soon ! ' 

‘ And why not soon ? ' he urged impatiently. ‘ Edith, 
have I not waited long enough ? Did I not consume my 
soul in three long years of waiting ? Have I not wasted 
the best years of my youth in silken dalliance, and frit- 
tered away any talents I ever possessed upon the idlest 
of love-letters, in which I was forbidden to talk of love ? 
Edith, I have been your slave — give me something for my 
service before it is too late.' 

‘ You are such a despondent lover/ she said, with a 
forced laugh. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 397 


‘Despondent, no ; but I feel the need of your love; I 
feel that I am isolated, that I cannot live without some 
stronger nature than my own to lean upon, and that your 
character can supply all that is wanting in mine. We 
ought to be happy, Edith. We have youth, wealth, free- 
dom, all the elements of happiness.’ 

‘Yes,’ she answered with a faint sigh, ‘we ought to be 
happy.’ 

‘ Let it be Monday, then. I will arrange all details.’ 

‘ Easter Monday ! What a vulgar day for a wedding.’ 

‘ Is it vulgar ? No matter, our marriage will be per- 
formed so quietly that hardly anyone will know anything 
about it till they see the announcement in the “Times.”’ 

‘Well, it must be as you like. You have been very 
good and devoted to me in all these years, and I don’t 
think I shall be wanting in respect to my poor James, if 
I consent to marry you in April instead of J une, though 
I daresay my sisters and people will talk. And as for 
my trousseau, I have plenty of gowns that will do well 
enough for your yacht. You must take me to Palestine, 
Gerard. I have always had a yearning to see the Holy 
Land,’ 

‘ You shall go wherever you like. You shall be captain 
and commander of the Jersey Lily,’ he answered, bending 
down to kiss the beautiful hand that moved in slow 
measure, waving a feather fan. ‘ She shall sail wherever 
you order her.’ 

They went into the house after this, and found Posa 
Gresham yawning over her novel, and the poodle yawn- 
ing on his bearskin rug. Nothing could have been less 
romantic than this final wooing; and if Gerard had not 
been too self-absorbed to observe keenly, he would have 
been struck by the contrast between Mrs. Champion’s 
manner to-night and the old days in Hertford-street. 

They drove through the dust and shabbiness of the 
outskirts of Florence next day, and up to the hill-top 
where Fiesole, the mother city, hangs like an eagle’s nest 
against a background of cloudless blue. 


398 The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil, 


The day was steeped in sunshine and balmiest air, and 
it was a happiness to escape from Lenten Florence, with 
her pealing bells, to this winding road which went climb- 
ing upward by villa gardens and flowery fields. 

Here, while the horses rested, Mrs. Grresham went to 
explore the cathedral, leaving Edith and Gerard free to 
climb the steep path to the cluster of trees on the top of 
the hill, in front of the stone steps that led up to the 
Franciscan convent and the church of St. Alessandro. 
Slowly, and very slowly, Gerard mounted that stony 
way, leaning on Edith Champion’s arm, with sorely lab- 
ouring breath. He stopped, breathless and exhausted, in 
front of an open shop, where an old man was mending 
shoes, who at once laid down his work, and brought out 
a chair for the tired Englishman. Edith entreated him to 
go no further, tried to persuade him that the view was 
quite as fine from the point they had reached as from the 
summit, but he persisted, and after resting for a few min- 
utes, he tossed a five franc piece to the civil cobbler — 
leaving him overpowered at the largeness of the donation 
r-and went labouring up the few remaining yards to the 
dusty little terrace, where a group of noisy Germans and 
a group of equally noisy Americans were expatiating upon 
the panorama in front of them. 

He sank panting upon the rough wooden bench, and 
Edith sat by his side in silence, holding his hand, which 
was cold and damp. 

A deadly chill crept into her heart as she sat there 
hand in hand with the man whose life was soon to be 
joined with her life. The same vague horror had crept 
over her two days ago, when she had stood face to face 
with her lover in the clear afternoon light, and had seen 
the ravages which less than a year had made in his coun- 
tenance — had seen that which her fear told her was the 
stamp of death. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 399 


CHAPTER XXVII. 



'COULD TWO DAYS LIVE AGAIN OF THAT DEAD YEAR. 

^ HERE were necessary delays which postponed 
the marriage till the end of the coming Easter 
week, and that panic, which was caused by 
tolling bells and torchlight funerals, having 
passed away, Gerard was less eagerly impa- 
tient, willing indeed that events should follow a 
natural course. Yet although the fever of impa- 
tience had spent itself, there was no looking backward, no 
remorseful thought of the devoted girl whose character 
would be blasted for ever by this act of his, or of the un- 
born child whose future he might have shielded from the 
chances of evil. Not once did he contemplate the pos- 
sibility of obtaining his release from Edith Champion, 
by a full confession of that other tie which to her wo- 
manly feeling would have been an insuperable bar to 
their marriage. All finer scruples, all the instincts of 
honour and of pity were absorbed by that tremendous 
self-love which, seeing life shrinking to narrowest limits, 
was intent on one thing only, to make the most of the 
life that remained to him, the life which was all. 

He rallied considerably after that day at Fiesole, and 
was equal to being taken about from church to church by 
Edith and her eager cousin, who could not have enough 
of the Florentine churches in this sacred season. He met 
them at the great door of the cathedral on Good Friday, 
after they had satisfied their scruples as pious Anglicans 
by attending a service at an English Church — service 
which Rosa denounced as hatefully low — and he went 
with them to hear a litany at the altar under Bruna- 


400 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 

leschi's dome, a solemn and awe inspiring function, a 
double semi-circle of priests and choristers within the 
marble dado and glass screen that enclosed the altar — 
lugubrious chanting unrelieved by the organ — and at the 
close of the service a sudden loud, rattling noise. 

Then the doors open, and priests and acolytes pour out 
in swift succession, priests in rich vestments, violet and 
gold, scarlet tippets, white fur, black stoles, a motley 
train, vanishing quickly towards the sacristy. 

And now the crowd troop into the sanctuary, and as- 
cend the steps of the altar, Gerard and his companions 
following, he curious only, they deeply impressed by that 
old world ceremonial. And one by one the devout bend 
to kiss the jasper slab of the altar, on which stands a 
golden cross, richly jewelled, which contains a fragment 
of that cross whereon the Man of Sorrows died for sin- 
ning, sorrowing man. 

‘I hope it was not wrong of me to do as the others 
did,' said Edith presently, as they left the cathedral, her 
eyes still dim with tears. 

‘Wrong!' ejaculated Rosa, who had performed the 
Romanist rite with unction. ‘No, indeed. I look for- 
ward to the day when we shall have relics in our own 
churches.' 

On Holy Saturday there was the spectacular display in 
front of the cathedral, and at this Gerard was constrained 
to assist and to sit in a sunlit window for nearly an hour, 
watching the humours of the good-tempered crowd in the 
Piazza, while the great black tabernacle, covered with ar- 
tificial roses and squibs, and Catherine wheels, awaited 
the sacred flame which was to set all its fireworks ex- 
ploding — flame which descended in a lightning flash on 
the wings of a dove from the lamp on the altar within 
the cathedral, sacred light which a pious pilgrim had car- 
ried unextinguished from the temple in Jerusalem to this 
Tuscan city. The dove came rushing down the invisible 
guiding wire as all the clocks of Florence chimed the 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 401 


noontide hour ; and then with much talk and laughter 
the crowd melted out of the Piazza, and the daily traffic 
was resumed, and Mrs. Champion’s landau came to the 
door of the umbrella shop, over which she had hired her 
window, and they drove away to the Via Tornabuoni, 
and the house of Doni, where luncheon had been ordered 
and a room engaged for them, luncheon at which Mrs. 
Champion’s powdered slave officiated, and got in the way 
of the brisk waiters, to whom his slow and solemn move- 
ments were an abomination. Only out of England could 
there come such sad and solemn bearing, thought the 
waiters. 

On Sunday there was High Mass at the Church of 
Santa Annunziata, and Gerard and the two ladies had 
seats in the choir, where liquid treble voices as of angels 
sang the alto parts, in Mozart’s 12bh Mass, and glorious 
baritones and basses filled in the wondrous harmonies, 
and priests in vestments of gold and silver, flashing with 
jewels, gorgeous with embroidery, officiated at the high 
altar; priests whose splendid raiment suggested the 
Priesthood of Egypt, in the days when Egyptian splen- 
dour was the crowning magnificence of the earth, to be 
imitated in after days by younger nations, but never to 
be surpassed. 

The music and the splendour, the strain on eye and ear 
wearied Gerard Hillersdon. He gave a sigh of relief as 
he took his seat in the landau opposite Edith and her 
cousin, Mrs. Gresham, who regaled them with her rap- 
tures about the choir, the voices — that exquisite treble — 
that magnificent bass. She descanted on every number 
in the Mass, being one of those persons who wear every 
subject to tatters. 

*■ And now I think we have had enough of churches,’ 
said Gerard, ‘ and we may spend the rest of our lives in 
the sunshine till we sail away to the Greek Archipelago.’ 

‘ And till I go back to Suffolk,’ sighed Mrs. Gresham, 
‘ I shall be very glad to see my dear good man again ; but, 


402 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 

oh, how dismal Sandyholme will be after Florence, and 
you two happy creatures will be sailing from island to 
island, and your life will be one delicious dream of sum- 
mer. Well, I can never be grateful enough to you, Edith, 
for having let me see Italy. Eobert Browning said that 
if his heart were cut open Italy would be found written 
upon it, and so I’m sure it would upon mine, if any one 
thought it worth looking at. And Florence, dear Florence !’ 

‘And the Via Tornabuoni where all the fashionable 
shops are — and Doni s, and the English tea-parties, and 
the English Church. I think these things would be found 
to hold the highest rank in your Florentine heart, Mrs. 
Giesham, though they don’t belong to the Florence of 
Mediaevalism and the Medici,’ said Gerard, glad to damp 
middle-aged enthusiasm. 

‘ That shows how very little you understand my char- 
acter, Mr. Hillersdon. As for the shops — they are very 
smart and artistic, but I would give all the shops in the 
Via Tornabuoni for Whiteley’s. I adore Florence most of 
all for her historical associations. To think that Cather- 
ine de Medici was reigning Duchess in that noble Palazzo 
Vecchio — who were the Vecchios, by the bye — some older 
family I suppose — and that dear Dante died here, and 
that Giordino Bruno was burnt here and Cossini lived 
here, and Browning ! Such a flood of wonderful memor- 
ies,’ concluded Kosa with a sigh. 

The preparations for the wedding hung fire somehow. 
The day was again postponed. Mrs. Champion had dis- 
covered that it would be impossible for her to marry with- 
out an interview with her solicitor, and that gentleman 
had telegraphed his inability to arrive in Florence before 
the end of the following week. 

‘ He is my trustee,’ she explained to Gerard, ‘ and I am 
so utterly unbusinesslike myself that I am peculiarly de- 
pendent upon him. I know that I am rich, and that my 
income is derived from things in the City, railways and 
foreign loans, don’t you know. I write cheques for what- 


The World y The Flesh, and The DeviL 


403 


ever I want, and Mr. Maddickson has never accused me 
oi being extravagant, so I fancy I must be very rich. 
But if I were to marry you without his arranging my 
affairs I don t know what entanglement might happen.' 

* What entanglement could there be ? Am I not rich 
enough to live without touching your fortune/ 

‘ My dear Gerard, I didn't mean any doubt of you — 
not for one moment — but the richer we both are the more 
necessary it must be to arrange things legally, must it 
not.' 

‘I don't think so. To my mind we are as free as the 
birds of the air, and all these delays wound me.' 

‘Don't say that, Gerard. You knowhow firmly I made 
up my mind not to marry for a year after poor James’ 
death, and if I give way upon that point to gratify a whim 
of yours ’ 

'A whim! How lightly you ^ speak. Perhaps you 
would rather we never married at all' 

He was white with anger. She reddened and averted 
her face. 

‘ Is it so? ' he asked, hoarse with passion. 

‘No, no, of course not,' she answered, * only I don't 
want to be hustled into marriage.' 

‘ Hustled, no, but life is short. If you can’t make up 
your mind to marry me within a fortnight from this day, 
we will cry quits for my three years' slavery, and will say 
good bye. There is a woman in England who won’t 
set up imaginary impediments if I ask her to be my 
wife.' 

His voice thickened with a suppressed sob as he spoke 
the last words. Ah, that woman in England, that woman 
who loved him with an unselfishness that was strong 
enough to conquer shame, that woman who was to be the 
mother of his child. 

‘ How cruel you are, Gerard/ exclaimed Edith, scared 
at the thought of, losing him, ‘ no doubt there are hun- 
dreds of women in England who would like to marry you. 


404 The World, The Flesh, and The DeviL 


with your wealth, just as there are hundreds of men wha 
would pretend to be passionately in love with me, for the 
same motive. We can be married within a fortniofht, I 
have no doubt. I’ll telegraph again to Mr. Maddickson 
and tell him he must come. I am having my wedding 
gown made. You would not like me to be married in 
black.’ 

‘ I don’t know that I should care. I want to make an 
end of senseless delays. The Jersey Lily is at Spezia, 
ready for us. Jermyn is to be here this afternoon.’ 

‘ Jermyn. How strange that you should be so fond of 
that uncanny personage.’ 

‘I never said I was fond of him. He amuses me, that’s 
all. As for his uncannyness, that’s a mere fashion. I 
believe he has left off telling fortunes. He is too clever to 
ride any hobby to death.’ 

‘ And he really got nothing for his fate-reading ? ’ 

^ He got into society. I think that was all he wanted.’ 

‘ Bring him to dinner this evening, and he can tell our 
fortunes again, if he likes.’ 

" Not for me. I prefer a happy ignorance.’ 

Justin Jermyn brought a considerable relief to that 
party of three which had begun to feel the shadow of an 
overpowering ennui, Edith ashamed to be sentimental in 
Bosa G-resham’s presence, Rosa infinitely bored, and bor- 
ing the other two. Mrs. Champion had shrunk from 
inviting her Florentine friends to meet her fiance. He 
looked so wretchedly ill, his humours were so fitful and 
capricious, that she felt in somewise ashamed of her choice. 
She could not tell these people how handsome, how bril- 
liant, how charming he had been two or three years ago. 
She could not inform the world that this intended mar- 
riage was the outcome of a girlish love. She preferred to 
keep her little Florentine world in complete ignorance of 
the approaching event. It would be time enough for them 
to know when she and Gerard were far away on the white 
wings of the J ersey Lily. And later, when Gerard should 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


405 


have recovered his health and good looks, and easy equable 
manners, later when he and she had become leading lights 
in London society, she would be proud of him and of 
their romantic union. 

When he recovered his health ? There were moments 
in which she asked herself shudderingly, would that ever 
be ? He pretended to be very confident of himself. He 
told her that to live he needed only happiness and a balmy 
climate ; but she knew that it was a feature of that fata- 
lest of fatal maladies for the patient to be hopeful in the 
very teeth of despair ; and she had seen many indications 
that had filled her with alarm. 

‘How I wish you would consult Dr. Wilson,’ she said 
one day, when he sank breathless on the marble bench 
by the fonntain, after ten minutes’ quiet walking. ‘ He 
is experienced and clever. I am sure he would be of use 
to you.’ 

‘ I have my own doctor in London,’ Gerard answered, 
curtly. ‘ Your Florentine doctor cannot tell me anything 
about myself that I don’t know, and as for treatment, 
my valet knows what to do for me. I shall be well when 
we get further south. Your Florence is as treacherous as 
her Medicis. The winds from the Apennines are laden 
with evil.’ 

Jermyn, under existing circumstances, was a decided 
acquisition. His familiarity with Florence astonished 
and charmed the two ladies. He knew every church, 
every palace, every picture, the traditions of every great 
family that had helped to make the history of the city. 
Knowledge like this makes every stone eloquent. He 
was asked to join in all their saunterings and in all their 
drives, and his presence gave an air of freshness and 
gaiety to the simplest pleasures — to the afternoon tea in 
the loggia, and to the long evenings in the salon, when 
Mrs. Gresham played Chopin and Schubert to her heart’s 
content, while the other three sat afar off and talked. 

‘ My cousin is better than an orchestrion,’ said Mrs. 


m 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


Champion, ^ one has only to turn the handle and she will 
discourse excellent music the whole evening, and forgive 
us for not listening to her/ 

‘ Yes, but I know that in her inmost heart Mrs. Gres- 
ham is pitying us for having a sense wanting,' said Jermyn, 
and then went on with his talk, caring no more for the 
most delicate rendering of a Rubinstein reverie, than if it 
had been a hurdygurdy grinding a tuneless polka in the 
road beyond the garden. 

* * ^ * % 

They all went to Spezia to look at the yacht, a rail- 
road journey of some hours, through a hot, arid country, 
which tried G-erard severely, and bored the other three. 

‘ Who would care to live at Pisa,' said Jermyn, while 
the train was stopping in the station outside that ancient 
city. ' After one had looked at the Cathedral, and the 
Baptistry, and the Campo Santo one would feel that life 
was done — there is nothing more. And it is a misfortune 
for everybody but the Cook's tourist that the three things 
are close together. One can't even pretend to take a long 
time in seeing them/ 

Mrs. Champion professed herself delighted with the 
yacht. She explored every cabin and corner. There was 
a French chef engaged, and an Italian butler, everything 
was ready for a tour in the Mediterranean, and the Med- 
iterranean as seen to-day in this sunlit harbour of Spezia, 
seemed a sea that could do no wrong. Jermyn showed 
Mrs. Champion her boudoir-dressing room, with its in- 
genious ottoman receptacles for her gowns and other 
Snerv, and the cabin for her maid — an infinitesimal cabin, 
but full of comforts. He showed her the grand piano, the 
electric lamps, all the luxuries of modern yachting. There 
was to be no roughing it on board the Jersey Lily. The 
arrangements of this 700 ton yacht left nothing to be 
regretted after the most perfect of continental hotels. 

Edith was enchanted with everything, but even in the 
midst of her enthusiasm a chilling fear came over hci’ at 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 407 


the thought of Gerard lying ill in that luxurious cabin, 
with its coquettish draperies of salmon pink and scattered 
rosebuds, its white and gold Worcester, in which porcelain 
vv^as made to imitate carved ivory. Sickness there — 
death there — in that narrow space, tricked out for the 
Loves and Graces to inhabit — disease, with all its loathly 
details, playing havoc with all the beauty of life, illness 
tending fatally, inevitable towards death. She turned 
from all that costly prettiness with a vague sense of 
horror. 

‘ Don’t you like the style ? ^ asked Jermyn, quick to see 
that revulsion of feeling. 

‘No; it is much too fine. I think a yacht should be 
simpler. One does not want the colouring of the Arabian 
Nights on the sea. Picture this cabin in a tempest — 
all this ornamentation tossed and fiying about — a tawdry 
chaos.’ 

She looked at Gerard who stood by, unconcerned in the 
discussion, obviously caring very little whether she were 
pleased or not, looking with dull indifferent eye upon the 
arrangements which had been made for his wedding tour. 
He had had these occasional lapses of abstraction in which 
he seemed to drift out of the common life of those around 
him; moods of sullen melancholy, which made Edith 
Champion shiver. 

They lunched on board the Jersey Lily, and the lun- 
cheon was gay enough, but Jermyn and Mrs. Gresham 
were the chief talkers, and it was Jermyn’s laughter that 
gave an air of joyousness to the meal. Gerard was 
dreamy and silent; Edith was anxiously watchful of his 
moods. He was to be her husband soon, and these moods 
of his would make the colouring of her life. Could she 
be happy if the mental atmosphere were always dull and 
gray as it was to-day ? The sapphire blue of the bay, the 
afternoon light on the Carrara Mountains grew dim and 
dull in the gloom of her lover’s temper ; he who long ago, 
in the old days of his poverty, had been so joyous a 
spirit. 


408 The World, The Flesh, and The iJeviL 

She thought of James Champion, and of those sad, 
monotonous visits to the house at Finchley, the weary 
hours she had spent trying to make conversation for a 
sick man, weighed down by the sense of his own infirm- 
ities, unable to take pleasure in anything. ‘ Would Ger- 
ard ever be like that V she asked herself with an aching 
dread ; would he, too, die as Champion had died, ' first 
a top.' She looked at his sunken cheek and hollow eye ; 
she noted his absent manner; and she felt no assurance 
of exemption from that dreadful doom. 

Happily, however, the dark mood did not last long, 
and Gerard was full of animation during the return 
journey, lull of talk about the intended cruise of the 
Jersey Lily. He had talked it all over with the sailing 
master. They had looked at charts, they had discussed 
the ports they were to touch — the islands which were 
worth stopping at — so many days for Cyprus, and so 
many for Corfu. They were to spend part of the autumn 
in Palestine, and to winter in Egypt, and then come 
slowly back to Naples in the early spring, andfrom Naples 
follow the coast in a leisurely way to Nice, and then 
good-bye, Jersey Lily, and as fast as the Rapide can carry 
us homeward, to London and Hillersdon House, and all 
the glories of a London season. The prospect sounded 
delightful, discussed in one of Gerard’s brightest moods, 
as they travelled from Pisa to Florence; but the outlook 
was not quite so joyous half-an-hour later when a laugh 
at one of Jermyn’s cynical flashes brought on a violent fit 
of coughing, one of those exhausting, suffocating parox- 
ysms which had moved the fair Bavarian to such deep 
pity. 


The World j The Flesh, and The Devil, 


409 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

*'AND ALL SHALL PASSE, AND THUS TAKE I MY LEAVE/* 

R. MADDICKSON, Mrs. Champion’s solicitor 
and trustee, arrived early in the following 
week — three days sooner than he had declared 
possible, urged to this haste by importunate 
telegrams. He was bidden to a dinner at 
which Mr. Hillersdon and his friend Jermyn were 
the only guests, in order that everything might be 
discussed that needed discussion, and that the lady’s con- 
fidential adviser might make the acquaintance of her fu- 
ture husband. 

It was a delicious evening, balmier than many an Eng- 
lish July. The Easter moon had waned, and the slender 
crescent of the new moon shone silvery pale in a rose- 
fiushed heaven, a heaven where in that lovely after-glow 
the first stars glimmered faint and wan. Mrs. Champion 
was in the garden with Gerard and Jermyn when the 
lawyer arrived, spruce and prim in his inspeccable even- 
ing dress, a man who deemed it a duty he owed to his 
profession to employ only the most admirable of tailors. 
The two young men where lounging on garden chairs in 
the circle by the fountain, beyond which the great pink 
peonies made a background of bloom and verdure. Mr. 
Maddickson’s short-sighted eyes took the big pink blos- 
soms for gigantic roses, such as a man might expect to 
find in Italy. He looked from one of the young men to 
the other, and at once made up his mind that the lady’s 
fianc^ was the fair youth leaning against the fountain, his 
head thrown back a little and the rosy light upon his 
face as he looked up at Mrs. Gresham, whose speech had 



410 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


just moved him to joyous laughter. Quite the sort of 
young man to catch a widow's fancy, thought Mr. Mad- 
dickson, who supposed it was in the nature of widows to 
be frivolous. 

He lelt a cold shiver — happily only perceptible to him- 
self — when Mrs. Champion introduced the pale, hollow- 
eyed young man, with slightly bent shoulders and an un- 
mistakable air of decay, as Mr. Hillersdon. He lest his 
usual aplomb, and was awkwardly silent for some min- 
utes after that introduction. 

There was a brief discussion between the lovers and 
the lawyer late in the evening, while Rosa and Mr. 
Jermyn were in the loggia, he smoking, she declaring she 
adored the odour of tobacco. 

There were no difficulties, Mr. Maddickson told his 
client and her betrothed, and the settlements might be of 
the simplest form. He proposed as a matter of course 
that the lady's fortune should be settled on herself and 
her children, giving her full disposing power if there 
should be no children. 

‘ You are so rich, Mr. Hillersdon,’ said the lawyer, 
‘that these details can hardly interest you.' 

‘They don't. I wanted Mrs. Champion to marry me out 
of hand ten days ago, without any legal fussification, or 
delay. I thought the Married Woman's Property Act 
would protect her estate, even in the event of my squand- 
ering my fortune, which I am hardly likely to do.' 

‘ It is always best to have these matters quietly dis- 
cussed,' said Mr. Maddickson. ‘A hasty marriage is 
rarely a wise marriage.’ 

He gave a little sigh as he uttered this tolerably safe 
opinion, and rose to take leave, but before departing he 
pawsed to address Mrs. Championin a lower tone. 

‘ I should much like to have a little talk with you to- 
morrow,' he said. ‘ Shall I find you at home if I call ?' 

‘Not in the afternoon. We are to drive to the Cer- 
tosa.’ 


Tue World, The Flesh and The Devil, 


411 


‘ In the morning, then ? I can be here at any hour you 
like/ ^ 

‘ Come at twelve, and stay to lunch. We lunch at half- 
past twelve/ And then, going with him towards the 
door of the salon, she said, in a lower tone. ^ I conclude 
there is i eally nothing now to hinder my marriage ? ' 

‘Nothing, except your own inclination. I think you 
are marrying too soon; but we will talk of that to-morrow.’ 

When he was gone she had an uncomfortable feeling 
that he would have something disagreeable to say to her 
when he came in the morning. People who ask for in- 
terviews in that elaborately urgent manner are seldom 
the bearers of pleasant tidings. She had a sleepless night, 
agitated by vague dread. 

Mr. Maddickson was punctual to a minute, for the 
timepiece in the salon chimed the hour as the footman 
announced him, looking as fresh and trim in his checked 
travelling suit as he had looked in evening dress ; clean- 
shaved, the image of respectability not unconscious of the 
latest fashion. 

‘ I have spent the morning at the Academy,’ he said, 
blandly, ‘and have become a convert to the Early Italian 
school. I don’t wonder at Hunt, and Millais, and those 
young fellows now I have seen those two walls — one 
splendid with the exquisite finish and lustrous colour of 
Fra Angelico and his discii>les, and the other covered 
with a collection of gloomy daubs, in the high classical 
manner, by the worst painters of the school that came 
after Raffaelle.' 

‘You have something serious to say to me?’ said 
Edith, not caring a jot for Mr. Maddickson’s opinions on 
art. 

‘ Something very serious.’ 

‘ Then pray come at once to the point, or my cousin 
will have returned from her walk beforeyou have finished/ 

‘ My dear Mrs. Champion, I have not had the pleasure 
of much social intercourse with you, but I have been in- 


412 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


terested in you professionally ever since your marriage, 
and my position your trustee should give me some of 
the privileges of friendship/ 

‘ Consider that you have every privilege that friend- 
ship can give,' she exclaimed impatiently ; ‘ but pray 
don’t beat about the bush/ 

^ Are you seriously attached to Mr. Hillersdon ? ’ 

‘ Of course I am, or I would not be thinking seriously 
of marrying him within a year of my husband’s death. 
We were boy and girl sweethearts, and I would have 
married him without a penny, if it hadn’t been for my 
people. They insisted on my marrying Mr. Champion, 
and he was very good to me, and I was very happy with 
him ; but the old love was never forgotten, and now that 
I am free what can be more natural than that I should 
marry my first love ? ' 

‘ What indeed, but for one unhappy fact/ 

^ What is that, pray ? ’ 

‘ You have engaged yourself to a dying man. Surely, 
my dear friend, you must see that this poor young man 
has the stamp of death upon him/ 

"I know that he is out of health. He spent the winter 
in England, which he ought not to have done. We are 
going on a long cruise; we shall be in a climate that will 
cure him. He has been neglectful of his health, reckless 
of himself, with no one to take care of him. It will be 
all different when we are married.’ 

My dear Mrs. Champion, don’t deceive yourself,’ the 
lawyer said earnestly. ‘You don’t pretend to have the 
power of working miracles, I suppose ; and the raising of 
Lazarus was hardly a greater miracle than this poor 
young man’s restoration to health would be. I tell you 
— for it is my duty to tell you — that he is dying. I have 
seen such cases before — cases of atrophy, heart and lungs 
both attacked, a gradual vanishing of life. Doctor him 
as you may, nurse him as you may, this young man must 
die. Marry him if you like — I shall deeply regret it if 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


413 


you do — and be sure you will be again a widow before 
the year is out/ 

Tears were streaming down Mrs. Champion’s cheeks. 
This cruel, hard-headed lawyer had only put into plain 
words the dim forebodings, the indistinct terrors which 
had been weighing her down almost ever since Gerard 
came to Florence. The change she had seen in him on 
his first coming had frozen her heart ; and not once in all 
the hours they had spent together had he seemed the 
same man she had loved a year ago. Between them 
there was a shadow, indescribable, indefinable, which she 
knew now was the shadow of death. 

Mr. Maddickson made no ill-advised attempt at con- 
solation. He knew that in such a case there must be 
tears, and he let her cry, waiting deferentially for any- 
thing she might have to say, 

‘1 had such a sad time with Mr. Champion,’ she said 
presently, ‘ it was so painful to see his mind gradually 
going. You know what a long, long illness it was, nearly 
a year. I was a great deal with him. I wanted him to 
feel that he was never abandoned. It was my duty but 
it was a sad trial. It left me an old woman/ 

This was a mere facon de parler, since Mrs. Champion’s 
sufferings during her husband’s illness had not written a 
line upon her brow or silvered a single hair. 

‘It was a dreadful time,’ she sighed, after a pause. ‘ I 
don’t think I could go through it again/ 

‘It would be very hard if you were called upon to do 
so,’ said Mr. Maddickson, and Mrs. Champion felt it would 
be hard. 

She w^anted the joys of life ; not to be steeped to the 
lips in sorrow and odours of fast-approaching death. 

‘Does he really seem to you so very ill ?’ she asked 
presently. 

‘ Nobody can doubt it who looks in his face. He has 
some medical attendance in Florence, I suppose/ 

‘No, I wanted him to see Dr. Wilson, but he refused. 


414 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


He says that he knows all about himself, that he has 
nothing to learn from any doctor/ 

‘ And is he hopeful about himself ? ' 

^ Yee, fairly hopeful, I think/ 

‘ Poor fellow. 1 am sorry for him ; but I should be 
sorrier for you if you were foolish enough to marry him/ 

Mrs. Gresham came in from her morning walk, loqua- 
cious and gushing as usual. She had been up the hill, 
and had taken another look at that dear David, and at 
the view of Florence from the terrace. 

* Florence is in one of her too delicious moods,’ she 
said, ' all sunlight and colour. My heart aches at the 
thought of going away, but the place will live in my 
heart for the rest of my life. I shall often be thinking 
of San Miniato on that hill of gardens, and the lovely 
light stealing in through the transparent marble in the 
Apse, when I am sitting in our own dear old dull gray 
church/ 

Gerard and his friend appeared before Rosa had left off 
talking, and there was an immediate adjournment to 
luncheon, at which meal conversation was chiefly sus- 
tained by Mr. Maddickson and Mr. Jermyn, with a run- 
ning accompaniment by Rosa, who broke in at every 
point of the argument upon Italian art to express opinions 
which were as irrelevant as they were enthusiastic. 

Edith Champion was silent and thoughtful all through 
luncheon, and more than usually observant of her lover, 
who looked tired and depressed, scarcely ate anything, 
and drank only a single glass of claret. Seeing this, she 
proposed an adjournment of the drive to the Carthusians. 

The afternoon was warm to sultriness, the road would 
be dusty, and the going up and down steps would tire 
Gerard. He was altogether indifferent, would go or not 
go as she pleased ; whereupon she settled that Mr. Jer- 
myn and Mr. Maddickson should drive with Mrs. Gres- 
ham, who was greedy of sight-seeing, and always anxious 
to repeat expeditions, while Gerard and his fiance^ could 
spend their afternoon in the garden. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 415 

That afternoon in the garden hung somewhat heavily 
on the engaged lovers. They had spent a good many 
afternoons and evenings together since Gerard’s arrival in 
Florence, afternoons and evenings that had been virtually 
tete-a-tete, inasmuch as Rosa was very discreet, and pre- 
ferred her piano to the society of the lovers. Thus they 
had talked of the past and of the future — their plans, 
their houses, their views of society, till there was no fresh 
ground left to travel over. Edith could talk only of 
actualities. The world of metaphysical speculations, the 
dreamland of poets, were worlds that were closed against 
her essentially worldly intellect. Gerard had never so 
felt the something wanting in her mind as he felt it now 
that he had known the companionship of Hester’s more 
spiritual nature. With Hester he had never been at a 
loss for subjects of conversation, even in the quiet mon- 
otony of their isolated lives. 

The fountain, with its border of Aram lilies, the pink 
peonies, the blood red cups of tulips that filled a border 
on a lower terrace, the perfume of lilac and hawthorn, all 
palled upon him, as he sat upon the marble bench and 
watched the water leaping gaily up towards the sunlight, 
only to tall and break in rainbow coloured spray — symbolic 
of the mind of man, always aspiring, never attaining. He 
was in one of those listless moods, when every nerve 
seemed relaxed, every sense dulled. Moods in which a 
man cares for nothing, hopes for nothing, and, save for 
the dread of death, would willingly have done with life. 
Was it so vast a boon, after all, he asked himself, this life 
to which he clung so passionately ? No boon, perhaps, 
but it was all. There was the rub. After this, nothing. 
He might sicken of the loveliness around him, of the 
glory of colour and the endless variety of light, of the 
distant view of the mountains, where the snow yet lin- 
gered. These might pall, but to exchange these for dark- 
ness and dust, and the world’s forgetfulness. 

In the discussion on the previous evening it had been 


416 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


settled that the wedding was to take place on the coming 
Saturday. Mr. Maddickson had tried his utmost by 
various suggestions, to defer the date, but Gerard had 
been inflexible, and had carried his point. In three da3'S 
these two who sat listless and silent in the afternoon sun- 
light, she sheltered by a large white parasol, he baring 
his head to the warmth, were to be man and wife. There 
was nothing more for them to talk about. Their future 
was decided. 

Gerard did not wait for the return of the party from 
the Certosa, or for afternoon tea. He pleaded letters that 
must be written for the evening post, and left before five 
o’clock, promising to dine at the villa as usual. Edith 
walked with him to the gate, and kissed him affection- 
ately at parting, detaining him a little at the last, as if 
she were loth to let him leave her. And then, when his 
carriage wheels were out of hearing, she went slowly 
back to the house, with streaming eyes, went straight to 
her room, and flung herself upon a sofa, and cried as if 
her heart would break. She was so sorry for him, she 
mourned him as one already dead, she mourned for her 
old love, which had died with the man she had loved, 
the light-hearted happy lover of five years ago. It was 
hard to acknowledge, it was bitter to bear, but she knew 
that Mr. Maddickson was right, and that to marry Ger- 
ard Hillersdon was only to take upon herself the burden 
of a great sorrow. 

‘ If I believed that I could make his last daj^s on earth 
happy, I would gladly marry him,’ she told herself. ‘I 
would think nothing of myself or of my own sorrow after- 
wards, my double widowhood ; but I have seen enough 
of him now to know that I can t make him happy. He 
is no happier with me than he is anywhere else. He is 
only bored and wearied. I am nothing to him, and his 
wish to marry me can only be the desire to keep his 
promise. I believe it will be a relief to his mind if I re- 
lease him from tlmt promise. It was wrong of me to ex- 
act such a vow ; very, very wrong.’ 


The World j The Fleshy and The Devil. 417 


She remembered that day in Her tford-street, when she 
had urged him to be true to her, when she had said to 
him of his promise — ‘Is it an oath V Ah, how passion- 
ately she loved him in those days, how impossible happi- 
ness had seemed to her without him. She had thought 
that if he were to marry any other woman she would die. 
There would be no help for her, nothing left. Wealth, 
and all that it can buy, independence, beauty, youth, would 
be worthless without him. And now she was meditating 
with what words, with what gentle circumlocution she 
would free herself from a tie that had become terrible to 
her, the bond between the living and the dead. Mr. Mad- 
dickson’s warning had suggested no new idea ; the mourn- 
ful conviction had been growing in her mind ever since 
Gerard came to Florence. She knew that he was doomed, 
and that the day of doom could not be far off. 

Gerard wrote his letters, to his mother, telling her of 
the intended wedding, to his banker, to his lawyer — and 
then threw himself down to rest upon a sofa in his spaci- 
ous salon. He slept more than an hour, and was only 
awakened by someone coming into the room. It was 
Jermyn who came with an open letter in his hand. 

‘ Have you come back straight from the Certosa, or did 
you stop for tea at the villa?* Gerard asked, and then 
seeing the altered light, ‘ is it time to dress for dinner ? * 

‘ I don t think you will care about dressing or dining 
in Florence to-night. I have some bad news for j'^ou,* 
replied Jermyn gravely, looking down at the letter. 

‘ Bad news — you have bad news — for me. From Helms- 
leigh — no, from Lowcombe,* he cried, turning ghastly 
pale. 

‘ Yes, it is from Lowcombe. It comes by a side wind, 
in a letter from Matt Muller.* 

‘ Give me the letter,* gasped Gerard, snatching it from 
Jermyn*s hand. 

He was too agitated for the first few moments to see 
the portion of the letter which referred to his own evil 


418 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 


fortune. He saw only words about the house Muller was 
building — abuse of architect and builder — the mistakes 
of one, the dilatoriness of the other. It was only when 
Jermyn put a hand over his shoulder and pointed to the 
bottom of the second page of closely written matter that 
he saw where the bad news began. 

^ You are interested I know in that pretty young wo- 
man at the Rosary, though I could never persuade you 
to introduce me to her. You will be sorry to hear that 
she is in sad trouble, poor girl, trouble which is all the 
sadder because the man who called himself her husband 
seems to have deserted her. There was a baby born at 
the Rosary — a baby that came upon this mortal scene 
before he was expected, poor little beggar. The ola 
father's sudden death, I believe, was the cause of this 
premature event — and ten days or a fortnight after the 
event the young mother went clean off her head, and only 
last night she escaped from the two nurses who had care 
of her, and wandered away by the river, with, I believe, 
the intention of drowning herself. The baby was drowned, 
and the mother only escaped by the happy chance of a 
couple of Cockneys who were rowing down from Oxford, 
and heard the splash, one of whom swam to the poor 
girl’s rescue very pluck ily. There is to be an inquest on 
the infant this afternoon, and I don’t know in whose 
custody the mother now is, but I suppose someone is 
looking after her. My builder’s foreman lives at Low- 
combe, and he tells me there has been a great deal of ex- 
citement about the affair, for this Mr. Hanley is supposed 
to be very rich, and he is thought to have acted cruelly to 
this poor young woman, wife or no wife, in leaving her 
at such a time.' 

‘ Cruelly,’ muttered Gerard, ‘ yes, with the cruelty of 
devils. But she • would not come with me — it was her 
choice to stay. How could I tell ? Is it true, Jermyn ? 
Is this some trick of yours to frighten me ? ' 

‘ It is no trick. I thought it best to show you the letter, 
that you should know the worst at once/ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 419 


‘ The worst, yes. Hester, perhaps, a prisoner — accused 
3f murdering her child ! The worst ! Oh, what a wretch 
I have been. When can I get away from here ? How 
soon can I get to London ? ' 

‘ You can leave Florence to-night ; I will go with you. 
The Mont Cenis, I think, is the quickest way. I'll ar- 
range everything with your servant. Shall you see Mrs. 
Champion before you go ? ' 

‘ See her, no ; what good would that do ? ' 

" We were to have dined with her this evening. Shall 
I write an apology in your name ? ' 

‘Yes, you can do that. Tell her I am called away 
upon a matter of life and death ; that I don't know how 
long it may be before I can return to Florence. You may 
make my apology as abject as you like. I doubt if she 
and I will ever meet again.' 

‘ You are agitating yourself too much, Hillersdon,' re- 
monstrated Jermjm. 

‘Can there be too much in the matter? Can anything 
be too much ? Oh, how nobly that girl loved me — how 
generous, how uncomplaining she was ! And I have mur- 
dered her ! First I slew her fair fame, and now her child 
is murdered — murdered by me, not by her, and she has to 
bear the brand of infamy, as if she were a common felon.' 

‘ She will not be considered guilty. It will be known 
that she was off her head, irresponsible. People will be 
good to her, be sure of that.' 

‘Will the law be good to her? The law which takes 
no account of circumstances, the law which settles every- 
thing by hard and fast lines. To-morrow ! It will be 
the day after to-morrow before we are at Lowcombe, 
travel how we may. What ages to wait. Get me some 
telegraph forms. I'll telegraph to the Hector. He is a 
good man, and may be able to help us.' 

‘To help us,' he said, making himself one with Hester 
in her trouble, re-united to her by calamity. He forgot 
in his agony how false he had been to her, forgot that he 


420 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


had planned to spend the rest of his days far away from 
her. The thought of her sorrow made her newly dear to 
him. 

He made his appeal to the Rector in the most urgent 
form that occurred to him. He implored that good man 
for Christian charity to be kind to the ill-used girl whom 
he knew as Mrs. Hanley. He urged him to spare no out- 
lay in providing legal help, if legal help were needed. If 
she was able to understand anything she was to be as- 
sured that her husband would be with her without loss of 
an hour. 

He used that word husband, careless of consequences, 
albeit in three days he was to have become the husband 
of another woman. 

While he wrote the telegram, Jermyn looked at the 
time table. The train for Turin left in an hour. The 
order was given to the valet, everything was to be ready 
and a Hy at the door in three-quarters of an hour. 

‘ You’ll have some dinner served here, I suppose,’ sug- 
gested Jermyn. 

‘ Do you think I can eat at such a time ? ’ 

‘ Well, no, perhaps not. You’ve been hard hit ; but it 
would be better if you could fortify yourself for a long 
journey.’ 

‘ Take care of yourself,’ answered Gerard, curtly. 

‘ Thanks. I always do that,’ said Jermyn. 

‘ I’ll go down to the table d’hdte when I’ve written to 
Mrs. Champion.’ 

He seated himself to write, but before he began a 
waiter brought in a letter for Mr. Hillersdon. Gerard 
knew the hand, the thick vellum paper with its narrow 
black border and massive black monogram ; he knew the 
delicate perfume which always accompanied such letters, 
a faint suggestion of violets or lilies. 

The letter was brief : — 

‘ Dear Gerard, — I have a wretched headache, and am 
altogether depressed and miserable this evening, so I 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


421 


must ask you and your friend to postpone your visit. I 
am not fit company for anyone. I will write again to- 
morrow. I have much to say to you — that must be said 
somehow. It may be easier to write than to speak. — 
Ever yours, ‘ Edith.’ 

A curious letter to be written by a woman from whom 
he had parted only a few hours before. What could she 
have to say to him that could not have been said by the 
fountain, when the two were so evidently at a loss for 
conversation ? He wondered at the wording of her letter, 
but with faintest interest in the question. Everything 
that affected his life at Florence had grown dim and 
blurred like a faded photograph. The image of Edith 
Champion had receded into the background of his 
thoughts. 

‘ Here is a letter that will save you the trouble of an 
elaborate apology,’ he said to Jermyn, ‘A letter which I 
can answer myself.’ 

He scrawled a hurried line announcing his departure 
from Florence. 

‘ You have deferred our wedding day twice,’ he wrote, 
‘ Fate constrains me to defer it for the third time. I will 
write to you from London.’ 


422 The World, The Flesh, and The DevU. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

FROM THE WARM, WILD KISS TO THE COLD. 

j^^^^^ERARD travelled as fast as trains and boat 
l\ll( would take him, but it was noon on the sec- 
ond day after he had left Florence before he 
arrived at the nearest station to Lowcombe, 
with the prospect of half an hours drive be- 
hind an indifferent horse before he could reach 
g j the Rosary and know the worst. He was alone. 

He had sent his valet to Hillersdon House, and 
had resolutely refused Jermyn s company, although Jer- 
myn had urged that he was hardly in a state of health 
to risk a solitary journey, or the consequences of further 
ill news. 

‘ If there is anything worse to be told, you could not 
help me to bear the blow,' Gerard answered, gloomily. 
"Nor would she care to see you with me. You were no 
favourite of hers; and perhaps if it had not been for yea 
I should never have left her.' 

They had searched all the morning papers they could 
obtain during their journey from Dover to Charing Cross 
to discover any paragraph that might record the calam- 
ity at Lowcombe — for any report of the inquest on the 
infant, or the rescue of the mother. It was at least some 
relief to find no such record. Whatever had happened, 
the report had, by nappy chance or kindly influence, 
been kept out of the papers. Hester's name and Hester's 
woe were not bandied about in a social leader, or even 
made the subject for a paragraph, 

Gerard reached Lowcombe, therefore, in absolute ig- 
norance of anything that might have happened since Mr. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


423 


Muller’s letter was written. He drove straight to the 
Rosary, where garden and shrubberies looked dull and 
dreary under a gray, sunless sky. It seemed as if he had 
left summer on the other side of the Alps — as if he had 
come into a land where there was no summer, only a 
neutral dulness, which meant gloom and smoke in Lon- 
don, and a gray monotone in the country. 

His heart grew cold at sight of the windows. The 
blinds were all down. The house was either uninhabited 
or inhabited by death. 

He rang violently, and rang again, but had to wait 
nearly five minutes, an interval of inexpressible agony, 
befoi e a housemaid opened the door, her countenance only 
just composing itself after the broad grin that had greeted 
the baker’s last sally. The baker’s cart rattled away 
from the back door while the housemaid stood at the 
front door answering her master’s eager questions. 

‘ Where is your mistress ? She — she is not — 

He could not utter the word that would have given 
shape to his fear. Happily the girl was sympathetic, 
although frivolous-minded as to bakers and butcher- 
boys. She did not keep him in agony. 

‘ She is not any worse, sir. She’s very bad, but not 
worse.’ 

‘ Can I see her at once — would it do her any harm to 
see me ?’ he asked, going towards the stair-case. 

‘ She’s not here, sir. She’s at the Rectory. Mr. Gil- 
stone had her taken there after she was saved from 
drowning by those two London gentlemen. She was 
took to the Rose and Crown, as that was the nearest 
house to the river ; the two gentlemen carried her there, 
quite unconscious, and they had hard work to bring her 
round. And they sent here for the two nurses, and they 
kept her there, at the Rose, till next morning ; and then 
the Rector he had her taken home to his own house, and 
his sister is helping to nurse her.’ 

‘ T-hey are good souls,’ cried Gerard, ‘ true Christians. 


424 The World, The Flesh and The Devil, 


What shall we do in our troubles when there are no more 
Christians in the world ? ^ he thought, deeply touched by 
kindness from the man whose sympathy he had repulsed. 

* Is your mistress dangerously ill ? ’ he asked. 

' She has been in great danger, sir, and I don’t think 
she’s out of danger yet. I was at the Rectory last night 
to inquire, and one of the nurses told me it was a very 
critical case. But she’s well nursed and well cared for, 
sir. You can make yourself happy about that.’ 

‘ Happy 1 I can never know happiness again.’ 

‘ Oh, yes, but you will, sir, when Mrs. Hanley gets well. 
1 make no doubt they’ll pull her through.’ 

‘ And her baby — ’ 

^ Oh, the poor little thing ! He was such a weakly 
little mite — I’m sure he’s better off in Heaven, if his pool 
mother could only think so, when she comes round and 
has to be told about ib.’ 

^ There was an inquest, wasn’t there ? ’ 

‘Well, yes, sir, there was an inquest at the Rose and 
Crown, but it wasn’t much of an inquest,’ Mary Jane 
added, in a comforting tone. ‘ The baker told me the 
coroner and the other gentlemen weren’t in the room 
above ten minutes. ‘ Death by misadventure,’ that was 
the verdict. Everybody was sorry for the poor young 
lady. And it was a misadventure, for if the night nurse 
hadn’t left the door unfastened, and fallen asleep in her 
easy chair, nothing need have gone wrong. It was all 
along of her carelessness. My poor young mistress got 
up and put on her morning gown and slippers, and took 
the poor little baby out of his bassinette, and went down 
stairs and out of the drawing-room window, and she 
must have gone across the lawn down to the towing path, 
and wandered and wandered for nearly two miles before 
she threw herself in just by the little creek where she 
and you used to be so fond of sitting in the punt, where 
we used to send your lunch out to you.’ 

‘ Yes, yes, I know; it was there, was it ?’ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 426 


The thought of the happy hours they had spent there, 
hours of blissful tranquillity, steeped in the summer 
warmth, the golden light, sweet odours of field flowers, 
soothing ripple of water, and rustle of willow branches. 
What happy hours of delight in all that is most exquisite 
in literature, Milton, Keats, Tennyson, Rosetti, in that 
music of words which is second only to the music of 
sweet concords and divine harmonies. Oh, happy hours, 
happy days, bliss which he had dreamed might last out 
all his life, and lengthen life by its reposeful sweetness. 
And now he had to think of his dear love, the fair Egeria 
of those happy hours, wandei ing hapless and distraught 
along that river bank, choosing in some dim fancy of the 
dreaming mind that spot above all the other spots in 
which to seek death and oblivion. 

‘ Tell me how it all happened,’ he said to the girl. ‘ Mr. 
Davenport’s death — was it very sudden ? ’ 

‘Dreadfully sudden, sir. It was the shock of her 
father’s death which made my mistress so bad. She was 
very down-hearted after you went abroad. We could all 
see that, though- none of us ever see her cry. She was 
too much the lady to give way before servants ; but we 
could tell by her face in the morning that she’d been ly- 
ing awake half the night, and that she’d been crying a 
good deal. And then she’d pull herself together, as you 
may say, and be bright and cheerful with the old gentle- 
man, and sit with him, and talk to him, and walk beside 
his chair, and give all her thoughts and all her time to 
making him as happy as he could be made. And it 
wasn’t easy work, for after you was gone he took a sort 
of restless fit, and he was always asking about you, the 
nurse said, in his queer way, and he seemed upeasy at 
not seeing you. And he used to talk to poor Mrs. Han- 
ley in a disagreeable way, and he was quite nasty to her, 
his man told me, and was always blaming her, as if she 
hadn’t done her very best for him. He was very cruel 
to her, I think ; but I suppose it must have been because 


426 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


he was worse in himself. And one day he was particu- 
larly unkind, and she left him in tears, and went out into 
the garden and sat there alone by the river, and didn't 
go to her father s room to sit with him while he took his 
lunch, as she almost always did, and his man found her 
sitting in the garden very low spirited, when he went to 
tell her that he and the nurse were going to dinner. Mis- 
sus always used to sit with the old gentleman while those 
two had their dinner. And she went up to his room and 
found him lying quietly on the sofa, and she sat there 
over an hour, for those two used to take their time over 
their dinner, no doubt thinking he was asleep all the 
time, and then, just as the nurse was going upstairs, we 
all heard a dreadful shriek and a fall, and we found her 
lying insensible on the floor near the sofa, where her 
father lay dead. She had gone to him, and spoken to 
him, and touched him, and found him dead.' 

There was a pause, a silence broken only by Gerard's 
hoarse sobs, as he sat at the table where he had planned 
his new novel, in the happy morning of his love, sat with 
his head bent low upon his folded arms. 

‘ She was very bad all that day and night, and Dr. 
Mivor telegraphed for another nurse, for he said we was 
in for a bad business. She was quite light-headed, 
poor young lady, and it was heart-breaking to hear her 
asking for you, and why you don't go to her, and talking 
about her father, and begging him to forgive her, as if 
she had any need of forgiveness, when she'd devoted her- 
self to making him comfortable and happy from the first 
hour he was took. And three days after his death the 
poor little baby was born, and she was quite out of her 
mind all the time and didn't seem to care about the baby, 
though ‘he was a dear pretty little thing — but I don't 
think he'd have lived long, even with the best care. A 
week after he was born the fever went down a bit, and 
she seemed to be coming more to herself. There was a 
great change in her, and she left off talking wildly, and 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 427 


she seemed to understand that her father was dead, and 
that you were far away ; and everybody thought she was 
better. I suppose this made the nighc-nurse a little less 
watchful. Both nurses had been very careful of her 
while she was so bad with the fever, but they began to 
take things a little easier, and to drop asleep in the easy 
chair. They'd both had a hard time of it for the first 
week. And I think that's about all I can tell you, sir, 
except that Mr. Davenport was buried in Lowcombe 
churchyard nearly a fortnight ago.' 

‘ Thank you for telling me so much. You are a good 
girl.’ 

‘ Shall I get you a bit of lunch, sir ? You are looking 
so tired and ill.' 

‘ No, thank you, Mary, I shall eat nothing till I get to 
the Rectory. Good day. Take care of the house, and 
keep everything in good order till your mistress and I 
come back. By the way, who has been supplying you 
with money since your mistress fell ill ? Have you had 
any difficulty in providing for expenses ?' 

‘No, sir, the cook knew where the mistress kept her 
money, and she made bold to unlock the drawer and take 
out what was wanted. There was a fifty-pound note and 
some sovereigns in the drawer. There has been plenty 
to pay the nurses and gardeners, and to provide any ready 
money that was wanted. Cook has kept a strict account 
of everything. The undertaker has not been paid any- 
thing, nor the doctor, but they know their money’s safe.' 

The fly was waiting, and it took Gerard to the Rectory 
with very little loss of time, yet to his agonised mind the 
distance seemed long, the horse slower than such hirelings 
usually are. Fate had used him almost better than he 
had hoped. The coroner's verdict freed Hester from all 
shadow of blame in the child’s death — his child. The 
child of whose existence he had taken so little thought, 
deeming that he had done enough when he had left ample 
funds at the mother’s disposal. He had cared but for one 


428 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


thing, to make the best and the most of his own life — 
and the thought of the child that was to be born to him 
had awakened no tender feeling, only an aching envy of 
that young fresh life in which doubtless his qualities and 
characteristics would live again under happier conditions, 
the life which would be tasting all the sweetest things 
that this world can give—love, ambition, pride, luxury, 
the mastery of men — while he was lying cold and dumb, 
cheated by inexorable Death out of the fortune which a 
wondrous chance had flung into his lap. Fate had given 
with one hand, and had taken away with the other. No, 
he had never felt as an expectant father should feel. The 
thought of his duty to the child had never urged him to 
repair the wrong he had done the mother — but now that 
Death had snatched the pale flower of unsanctified love, 
remorse weighed heavy on his heart, and he hated him- 
self for the unscrupulous egotism which had governe;! 
him in all his relations with the woman he had pretended 
to love. He had glossed over all that was guilty in their 
union ; he had kissed away her tears and made light of 
her remorse; he had compared her to Shelleys Mary, 
forgetting that Shelley was as eager to legalise his union 
as the most conforming Christian in the land. He looked 
back upon the happy days of their love, and knew that 
when he was happiest Hester s life had been under the 
shadow of an ever-present regret, knew that while she 
was generous and devoted he had been selfish and false, 
soothing her conscience with sophistries and vague pro- 
mises to which she was too delicate ever to refer. 

Yes, he had used her ill, the woman who loved him ; 
had killed her it might be ; or had killed her mind for 
ever, leaving her to go down to old age through the long 
joyless years, a mindless wreck ; she who was once so 
beautiful and so happy, a lovely ethereal creature in whom 
mind and heart were paramount over clay. 

The Rector received him coldly, and with a counten- 
ance to which unaccustomed sternness gave an expression 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 429 


of intense severity. When a benevolent man is angry 
his anger has a deeper seat and a more appalling aspect 
than the ready displeasure of less kindly spirits. For 
Mr. Gilstone to be angry meant a complete upheaval 
of a nature that was made up of sympathy and compas- 
sion. But here for once was a man with whom he could 
not sympathise, for whom his only feeling was detesta- 
tion. 

‘ Is she recovering ? May I see her ? ’ asked Gerard, on 
the very threshold of the Rector s study, chilled by that 
repelling countenance, yet too full of the thought of Hester 
to delay his questioning. 

‘ She is a shade better this morning,’ the Rector answer- 
ed, coldly, ‘ but she is far too ill for you to see her — at 
any rate until the doctor thinks it safe — and when you 
are allowed to see her it is doubtful whether she will 
recognise 3 'Ou. She is in a world of her own, poor soul, a 
world of shadows.’ 

‘ Is her mind quite gone ? ’ faltered Gerard. ‘ Does the 
Doctor fear ’ 

^ The doctor fears more for her life than for her mind. 
If she lives the mind will recover its balance as strength 
returns. That is his opinion and mine. I have seen 
such cases before — and the result has generallj" been hap- 
py; but in those cases we had to deal with a ruder clay. 
All that is loftiest in that girl’s nature will tell against 
her recovery. There is a heavy account against you here, 
Mr. Hanley.’ 

‘ I know, I know,’ cried Gerard, with his face turned 
from the Rector, as he stood looking out of the window, 
across the beds of tulips, towards the churchyard, seeing 
nothing which his eyes looked at, only turning his face 
away lest anyone should see him in his agonj^ 

‘ A heavy account; you have brought dishonour upon 
a woman whose every instinct makes for virtue, and you 
have broken her heart by your desertion.’ 

‘ I did not desert her ’ 


430 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 


' Not as the world reckons desertion, perhaps. You left 
her a house and servants and a buudle of bank notes ; 
but you left her just when she had the most need of af- 
fection and sympathy — left her to face an ordeal which 
might mean death — left her under conditions which no 
man with a heart could have ignored,’ 

^ I was wrong — selfish — cruel. Say the worst you can 
of me. Lash me with bitter words. I acknowledge my 
iniquity. I was only just recovered from a dangerous 
illness ’ 

, ‘ Through which she nursed you. I have heard of her 
devotion.’ 

‘ Through which she nursed me. I was not ungrateful 
— but I was wretched, borne down by the knowledge 
that I had only a short time to live. Ah, Rector, you in 
your green old age, sturdy, vigorous, with strength to 
enjoy the fulness of life even now when your hair is silver 
— ^you can hardly realise what a young man feels who has 
most unexpectedly inherited a vast fortune, and who, 
while the delight of possession is still fresh and wonder- 
ful, is told that his days are narrowed to a few precarious 
years — that if he is to last out even that short span he 
must watch himself with jealous care, husband his emo- 
tions lest the natural joys of youth should waste the oil 
in the lamp. This was what 1 was told. Be happy, be 
calm, be tranquil, said my physician : in other words, be 
self-indulgent, care for nothing and no one but self. And 
I felt that yonder house was killing me. The shadow of 
that old man s decaying age darkened my fading youth. 
If she would have gone with me to the south there would 
have been no break in our union — at least I think not — 

though there was another claim ’ 

‘ She refused to leave her father, I understand r ’ 

‘ Yes. She preferred him to me. It was her own free 
choice.’ 

‘ Well, there are excuses for you, perhaps ; and the result 
of your conduct has been so fatal that you need no sermon 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 431 


from me. If you have a heart, the rest of your life must 
be darkened by remorse. Your child s death lies at your 
door.’ 

‘Does she remember that dreadful night — does she 
grieve for the child ? ’ asked Gerard. 

‘ Happily not. I have told you she is living in a world 
of shadows/ 

‘ Let me see her,’ pleaded Gerard, ‘ You don’t know 
how fondly she loves me — how dear we have been to 
each other. Her mind will awaken at the sound of my 
voice.’ 

‘ Awaken to the memory of all that she has suffered. 
Would that be an advantage ? Mr. Mivor must be the 
judge as to whether she ought to see you. If he says 
Yes ’ 

‘ When will he be here ? ’ 

‘ Not till the evening.’ 

‘ Then I’ll go to his house, and bring him here if neces- 
sary. Mr. Gilstone,’ said Gerard, stopping on the thres- 
hold, as the rector followed him to the hall, ‘ you are a 
good man. However hardly you may think of me, noth- 
ing will ever lessen my gratitude to you — and in the short 
time I may yet have to live I hope to prove that my 
gratitude means something more than a word.’ 

The Rector gave him his hand in silence, and Gerard 
got into the fly and was driven to Mr. Mivor’s comfortable 
cottage, a low, white-walled building with a thatched 
roof, at the end of the straggling village street. 

Mr. Mivor was surprised to see him, but suppressed all 
expression of astonishment. 

‘ I should have telegraphed for you more than a fort- 
night ago if I had known where to find you,’ he said. ‘ I 
am glad you have come back. Mrs. Hanley is a shade 
better to-day — only a shade. We must be thankful for 
the least improvement, and we must try not to lose ground 
again.* 

‘ She has been dangerously ill, I am told ? ’ 


4S2 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘ Dangerously ! Yes, I should think so. She has been 
on the brink of death, not once, but several times since 
the birth of her child — and since the fever took a bad 
turn — the night she tried to make away with herself — 
her condition has been all but hopeless, until yesterday, 
when she began to show signs of rallying/ 

* May I see her ? ’ 

‘I don’t think it would do her any harm. She won’t 
know you/ 

‘Yes, she will. She will know me. She may not re- 
cognize people who are almost strangers to her, but surely 
she will know me — ’ 

‘ Poor lady 1 She hardly knows herself. Ask her who 
she is, and she will tell you a strange story. All we can 
hope is that with returning strength, mind and memory 
will return. I will go to the Rectory with you, and if I 
find her as quiet as she was this morning you shall see 
her.’ 

They were at the Rectory ten minutes later, and this 
time Mr. Gilstone received Gerard with kindliness. He 
had given speech to his indignation, and now all that was 
kindly in his nature pleaded with him for the repentant 
sinner. He received Gerard in his study, while the doc- 
tor went upstairs to see his patient. 

‘You have not asked me why I took upon myself to 
have Mrs. Hanley brought to this house, rather than to 
her own,’ he said. 

‘ I had no reason to ask. It was easy for me to under- 
stand your kindly motive. You would not let her re-enter 
a house in which she had tasted such misery — ^you wished 
to surround her with fresh objects, in a house where noth- 
ing would remind her of her past sufferings.’ 

‘That was one motive. The other was to place her 
under the care of my sister. However devoted hired 
nurses may be, and I have nothing to say against the wo- 
man who is now nursing Mrs. Hanley, it is well that there 
should be some one near who is not a hireling, who works 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


43S 


for love, and love only. My sister s heart has gone out 
to this poor lady/ 

Mr. Mivor appeared at the study door, which had stood 
open while Gerard waited, his ear strained to catch every 
sound in the quiet, orderly house, where all the machinery 
of life went on with a calm regularity that knew no 
change but the changing seasons. The silence of the 
house oppressed Gerard as he went upstairs, filled with an 
aching fear. Was he to find her cold and unconscious of 
his presence — the girl who had clung about him with de- 
spairing love when they parted less than a month ago ? 

A door was softly opened, a woman in white cap and 
apron looked at him gravely, and drew aside. It was the 
nurse who had waited on old Nicholas Davenport, and 
even in this moment the association made him shudder. 
And then, scarce conscious of his own movements, he was 
standing in a sunlit room where a j^oung woman in a 
white mourning gown, and with hollow cheeks and soft, 
fair hair, cropped close to the well-shaped head, was sitting 
at a table playing with the flowers that were strewn up- 
on it. 

‘ Hester, Hester, my darling, I have come back to you,’ 
he cried, in a heart-broken voice, and then he fell on his 
knees beside her chair, and tried to put his arms about her, 
to draw the fair face down towards his quivering lips, but 
she shrank away from him with a scared look. 

In spite of the doctor s warning he was utterly unpre- 
pared for this. He had hugged himself with the thought 
that had her mind wandered ever so far away, as far as 
east from west, or heaven from earth, she would know 
him, to him she would be unchanged. The once beloved 
personality would stand out clear and firm amid the chaos 
of a mind unhinged. Much as he had prated of molecu- 
lar action, and nerve messages, and all the machinery of 
materialism, he had expected here to find spirit working 
independently of matter and love dominant over the laws 
of physiology. 


434 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


The exquisite blue eyes — violet, dark, dilated by mad- 
ness, looked at him, looked him through and through, and 
knew him not. She shrank from him with repulsion, 
gathered up the scattered flowers hastily in the folds of 
her loose muslin gown, and moved away from the table. 

‘ I'm going to plant these in the front garden, nurse,' 
she said. ' I want to get them planted before father 
comes from the library. It'll be a surprise for him, poor 
dear. He was grumbling about the dust this morning, 
and saying how it spoils everything, and he'll be pleased 
to see the garden full of tulips and hyacinths. This sort 
will grow without roots — they grow best without roots, 
don't they ? ’ 

She looked down at the flowers, a little dubiously, as if 
not quite clear upon this point, and then with a sudden 
vehemence ran to the fire-place, where a small fire was 
burning behind a high old-fashioned brass fender, and 
flung the tulips and hyacinths into the fender. 

‘ Oh, Mrs. Hanley, that's very naughty of you,' cried 
the nurse, as if she had been reproving a child, ‘ to throw 
away the lovely flowers that the Rector brought you this 
morning. Why did you do that, now ? ' 

‘ I don’t want them. They won’t grow. It’s the day 
for my music lesson, and I haven’t practised. How cross 
Herr Schuter will be !’ 

There was a little cottage piano in a 'recess by the fire- 
place — a little old piano on which Miss Gilstone had prac- 
tised her scales forty years before. Hester ran to the 
piano, seated herself hastily, and began to play one of 
Chopin's nocturnes — a piece so familiar in her girlhood 
that even in distraction some memory of the notes remain- 
ed, and she played correctly and with feeling to the end 
of the first movement, when suddenly, at a loss for the 
notes, she burst into tears and left the piano. 

‘ It is all gone,’ she said. ' Why can't I remember ?’ 

In all these varying moods and rapid movements about 
the room there had not been one look or one gesture which 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. * 435 


indicated the faintest consciousness of Gerard’s presence. 
Those large, luminous eyes looked at him and saw him 
not, or saw him only as a stranger whose image evolved 
not one ray of interest. 

The nurse dried her tears and soothed her, after that 
hurst of grief at the piano, and a few minutes later she 
stood at the open window tranquilised and smiling, watch- 
ing for someone with an air of glad expectancy. 

" How late he is,’ she said, ^ and I’ve got such a nice lit- 
tle dinner for him. I’m afraid it will be spoilt by wait- 
ing. It’s the day the new magazines are given out. He 
is always late that day. I ought to have remembered/ 

She turned quietly from the window and looked about 
the room. 

‘ What has become of my sewing-machine ? ’ she asked. 

‘ Have you taken it away ? ’ to the nurse ; ‘ or you ? ’ to 
Gerard. ' Pray bring it back directly, or I shall be be- 
hindhand with my work.’ 

Her thoughts were all in the past, the days before she 
had entered into the tragedy of life, while yet existence 
was calm and passionless, and meant only patience 
and duty. How strange it seemed to find her memory 
dwelling upon that dull life of drudgery and care, while 
the season of joy and love was forgotten. 

‘Is she often as restless as this?’ he asked, with an 
agonized look at the doctor, who stood by the window, 
calmly watchful of his patient. 

‘ Restless, do you call her ? You would know what 
restlessness means if you had seen her three days ago, 
when the delirium was at its height, and one delusion fol- 
lowed another at lightning pace in that poor little head, 
and when it was all her two nurses could do to keep her 
from doing herself harm. She has improved wonderfully 
since then, and I am a great deal more hopeful about 
her,’ 

‘ Have you had no second opinion ? Surely in such a 
case as this a specialist should have been consulted ? 


43G 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘ We have had Dr. Campbell, the famous mad-doctor, 
whose opinion of the case corresponds with my own. 
There is very little to be done. Watchfulness and good 
nursing are all that we have to look to — and Nature, the 
great healer. I was right, you see. I told you she would 
not know you, and that seeing you could do her neither 
good nor harm. 

‘ Yes, you were right. I am nothing to her — no more 
than if 1 had been a century dead — no more than any of 
the dead who are lying under those crumbling old tomb- 
stones over there.' 

‘ He glanced towards the churchyard where the April 
sun was shining upon gray granite and golden lichen, the 
dark foliage of antique yews, and the downy tufts upon 
the willows. He was standing side-by-side with the 
woman who had loved him better than her life, and she 
took no heed of him. He tried to take her hand, but she 
moved away from him, looking at him in shy surprise, 
and with some touch of apprehension and dislike. 

‘ Hester,' he exclaimed, piteously, ‘ don't you know me ? ' 

‘ Are you another doctor ? ' she asked. ‘ There have 
been so many doctors — so many nurses — and yet I am 
quite well. They have cut off my hair. I don’t want 
any more doctors.' 

‘ You see how she is,' said Mr. Mivor. ' I think you 
had better come away at once. Your presence excites 
her, although she doesn't know you. Nothing can be 
done for her that is not being done in this house. Miss 
Gilstone has been all kindness. She has given up her 
sitting-room and bed-room to your wife because they are 
the prettiest in the house.' 

‘ She is an angel of goodness and charity,' said Gerard,' 
and heaven knows how I can ever repay her.' 

‘ She is a Christian,' said Mr. Mivor,' and she won't look 
to you for any reward. It is as natural for her to do 
good as it is for the flowers to bloom when their season 
comes.' 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 437 


Gerard followed the doctor out of the room, his looks 
lingering to the last upon the sweet pale face by the win- 
dow, but the face gave no token of returning memory. 
The doctor was right, no doubt. Messages of some kind 
were being carried swiftly enough along the nerve-fibres 
to the nerve-corpuscles, but no message told of Gerard 
Hillersdon s existence, or of last year s love-story. 

Mr. Hillersdon did not go back to London immediately 
after leaving the Rectory. He was fagged and faint after 
the long night of travel, the long morning of heart-rend- 
ing emotions, the unaccustomed hurrying to and fro ; but 
he had something to do that must be done, and with this 
business on his mind he had refused all ofiers of refresh- 
ment from the hospitable Rector, although he had eaten 
nothing since the hurried dinner in Paris on the previous 
night. He went from the Rectory at Lowcombe to the 
Rose and Crown, in the next village, the inn to which 
Hester had been carried after the rescue from the river, 
and at which the inquest upon her baby had been held. 
He went to that house thinking that there he would be 
most likely to get the information he wanted about the 
man who had saved Hesters life, and lightened his 
burden of guilt by so much the dearest portion of the 
sacrifice. 

Life was saved, and reason might return ; but, alas, 
wdth returning reason would come the mother’s cry for 
the child she had slain in her madness. Must she be told 
— or would she remember what she had done — would she 
recall the circumstances of that fearful night, and know 
that in her attempt to end her own sorrows she had de- 
stroyed her innocent child ? 

To-day his business was to find out the name of the 
man who had saved her life, possibly at the hazard of his 
own, and he argued that the Rose and Crown was the 
likeliest place at which to get the information he wanted. 

He was not mistaken. The inn was kept by a buxom 
widow, who charged abnormal prices for bedrooms in the 


438 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


boating season, and was said to have fattened by picking 
the bones of boating men. Although her bills were ex- 
tortionate her heart was beneficent, and she was eager to 
be serviceable to Mr. Hanley, of the Rosary. She expa- 
tiated tearfully upon the loveliness of the dear young 
lady, who had been carried unconscious and apparently 
dead to the Rose and Crown s best bedroom. She dilated 
upon the efforts that had been made to bring life back to 
that cold form, and upon her own pious thankfulness 
when those efforts proved successful. 

‘ Indeed, sir, 1 thought the poor young lady was gone/ 
she said, ‘ and if we hadn't had a medical student in the 
house who hurged us to go on/ the aspirate here seemed 
onl}^ an element of force, ‘and if we hadn't had theNew- 
mane Serciety's instructions 'anging up in the 'all, I don't 
suppose we should ever have had the patience or the 
strength of mind to have kep' at it.' 

‘ Can you tell me the name of the man who rescued 
her?' asked Gerard, somewhat curtly, considering the 
landlady's beneficence a matter to be settled like her bills, 
by a handsome cheque. 

‘Why, of course I can, sir. He and his friend was 
obliged to stay the night in the house, for he'd nothing 
but his wet boating clothes and a overcoat. He stopped 
that night, and his clothes was dried at my own sitting- 
room fire, which I kep' up all night on purpose, and he 
wrote his name in the visitors' book before he left next 
morning. I says, “I should like to have your name in my 
book, sir, for you're a brave- hearted man," and he laughs 
and says, “ Lor, landlady, you don't think that anything 
out of the way, do you ? And as for my name,'^ he says, 
“ it's a very common one, but such as it is you’re welcome 
to it." ' 

The landlady produced a fat black quarto, in which 
amidst much sportive commendation of her meat and 
drink, and many fictitious entries of Dukes and Mar- 
quises, famous politicians, and notorious public charac- 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 439 


ters, and a good deal of doggerel verse, there appeared 
the following modest entry : — 

Lawrence Brown, 49, Parchment-place, Inner Temple. 

Gerard copied the address into his pocket-book^ pre- 
sented the mistress of the Rose and Crown with a bank 
note, for distribution among those servants who had been 
active and helpful on the night of the catastrophe, wished 
her good- day, and was seated in his fly before she had 
time to steal a glance at the denomination of the note, or 
to give speech to her gratitude on discovering that it was 
not flve, but flve-and-twenty. 

‘ This Mr. Hanley must be rich to throw his money 
about like this/ she refle.cte 1, ‘but for all that I don’t be- 
lieve that pretty young creature is his wife. She 
wouldn’t have took to wandering about with her baby if 
she had been. Perpetual fever, says the doctor. Don’t 
tell me. Perpetual fever would never make a respectable 
married woman forget herself to that extent.’ 

Within two hours’ space of leaving the Rose and Crown 
Gerard Hillersdon was seated face to face with Lawrence 
Brown, barrister of no particular circuit, and of Parch- 
ment-place, Inner Temple. 

The room was shabby almost to squalidness : the man 
was nearer forty than thirty, with roughly modelled fea- 
tures, keen eyes, fine intelligent brow, and black hair, al- 
ready touched with gray about the temples. 

He received Mr. Hillersdon’s thanks politely, but with 
obvious reserve. He made very light of what he had 
done — no man seeing a life at stake could have done less. 
He was sorry — and here his face grew pale and stern — 
he had not been able to save the other life, the poor little 
child. 

‘ My friend and I heard a child’s faint cry,’ he said, 
‘ and it was that which called our attention to the spot, 
before we heard the splash. The current runs strong at 
that point. The woman rose, and sank again, twice be- 
fore I caught hold of her, but the child was swept away 


440 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 


upon the current. The body was found caught among 
the weeds and rushes half a mile lower down the stream/ 

There was a silence of some moments, during which 
Mr. Brown refilled his briarwood pipe, automatically, and 
looked at the little bit of fire burning dully in a rusty 
iron grate. 

‘ Mr. Brown,' began Gerard abruptly, ‘ I am a very rich 
man.' 

‘ I am glad to hear it,' replied Brown. ‘ There are con- 
solations in wealth which we poor men can hardly realize.' 

‘ You have called yourself a poor man,' said Gerard, 
eagerly, ‘so you must not be angry with me if I presume 
to take that as a fact. I am rich, but my wealth is of 
very little use to me. I have had my death warrant. 
My time for spending money will very soon be over, and 
my wealth must pass into other hands. I am here to beg 
your acceptance of a substantial reward for the act which 
has saved me from a burden that must have been unbear- 
able — the thought that my absence from England had 
caused the death of the person who is dearer to me than 
anyone else upon earth. Will you oblige me wdth your 
inkstand ? ' 

He stretched his hand towards a shabby china ink-pot 
in which half a dozen much-used quills kept guard over 
a thimbleful of ink. 

‘ What are you going to do, Mr. Hanley ?' 

‘ I am going to write a cheque, if you will allow me — 
a cheque for five thousand pounds, payable to your order.' 

‘ You are very good, but I am not a boatman, and I 
don't save lives on hire. I have not the faintest claim 
upon your purse. What I did for your — for Mrs. Han- 
ley, I would have done for any love-sick kitchen-wench 
along the river. I heard a woman fall into the water, 
and I fetched her out. Do you suppose that I want to 
take money for that ? ' 

‘ You would take a big fee for doing everything short 
of perjuring yourself in order to save the neck of a ruffi- 
anly burglar,' said Gerard. 


The World, The Mesh, and The Devil. 


441 


* I should do that in the way of business. It is my 
profession to defend burglars, and, short of perjury, to 
make believe that they are innocent and lamb-like.’ 

‘ And you will not accept this recompense from me — a 
trifling recompense as compared with my large means. 
You will not allow me to think that for once in a way 
my wealth has been of some service to a good man.’ 

‘ I thank you for your kind opinion of me, and for your 
wish to do me a kindness, but I cannot take a gift of 
money from you/ 

‘Because you think badly of me.’ 

‘ I could not take a gift of money from any man who 
was not of my own blood, or so near and dear to me by 
friendship as to nullify all sense of obligation.’ 

‘ But you could feel no obligation in this case, while 
your refusal to accept any substantial expression of my 
gratitude leaves me under the burden of a very heavy 
obligation. Do you think that is generous on your part?’ 

‘ I am only certain of one thing, Mr. Hanley — I cannot 
accept any gift from you/ 

‘ Because you have a bad opinion of me. Come, Mr. 
Brown, between man and man, is not that your reason ?’ 

‘You force me to plain speech,’ answered the barrister. 
‘Yes, that is one of my reasons. I could not take a fa- 
vor from a man I despise, and I can have no better feel- 
ing than contempt for the man who could abandon a 
lonely and highly strung girl in the day of trial — leave 
her to break her heart, and to try to make an end of her- 
self in her despair.’ 

‘ You are very ready with your summing up of my con- 
duct. I was absent— granted; but I had left Mrs. Han- 
ley surrounded with all nroner care ’ 

‘ You mean you had left her with a full purse and three 
or four servants. Do you think that means the care due 
from a husband to a wife who is about to become a 
mother ? You must not be surprised if I have formed my 
own opinion about you, Mr. Hanley, I have been up and 
BB 


442 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil. 


down the river a good many times, and have lived for a 
good many days here and there at riverside inns within a 
few miles of the Rosary, and have heard a good deal of 
talk about you and your lovely wife — or not- wife, as the 
case may be. The village gossips would have it that she 
was not your wife/ 

‘ The village gossips were right. I was bound by an 
earlier claim, and I dared not marry her; but if she and I 
live, and if I can release myself from that other claim 
with honour, she shall be my wife.' 

‘ I am glad to hear that. But I doubt if your tardy 
reparation can ever efface the past.' 

The man was obviously so thoroughly in earnest that 
even in the face of those shabby chambers, that well-worn 
shooting jacket and those much-kneed trousers, Gerard 
could push his offer no further. He might have been as 
rich as Rothschild, and this man would have accepted not 
so much as a single piece of gold out of his treasury. 
There are men of strong feelings and prejudices to whom 
money is not all in all ; men who are content to wear 
shabby tweed and trousers that are bulging at the knees 
and frayed at the edge, and to sit beside a sparse fire in 
a rusty grate, and smoke coarse tobacco in an eighteen- 
penny pipe, so long as that inward fire of conscience 
burns bright and clear, and the silvering head can hold 
itself high in the face of mankind. 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


443 


CHAPTER XXX. 


''THE LOVE THAT CAUGHI STRANGE LIGHT FROM DEATH' 
OWN EYES.” 



ERALD HILLERSDON had no mind to oc- 
cupy the cottage in which he had dreamed 
his brief love-dream, but he went to Low- 
combe daily, and sat in the Rector s study, 
and heard the doctor s opinion, and the report 
of the nurses, and once on each day was admitted 
for a short time to the pretty sitting room where 
Hester flitted from object to object with a fever- 
ish restlessness, or else sat statue-like by the open win- 
dow, gazing dreamily at churchyard or river. 

The doctor and the nurses told him that there was a 
gradual improvement. The patients nights were less 
wakeful, and she was able to take a little more nourish- 
ment. Altogether the case seemed hopeful, and even the 
violence of the earlier stages was said to predicate a rapid 
recovery. 

‘If she were always as you see her just now,' said Mr. 
Mivor, glancing toward the rigid form and marble face by 
the window, ‘1 should consider her case almost hopeless 
— but that hyper-activity of brain which scares you gives 
me encouragement.' 


The Rector was kind and sympathetic, but Grerard ob- 
served that Miss Gilstone avoided him. He was never 
shown into the drawing-room, but into the Rectors study, 
where he felt himself in somewise shut out from social in- 
tercourse, as if he had been a leper. On his third visit 
he told the Rector that he was anxious to thank Miss 
Gilstone for her goodness to Hester ; but the Rector shook 
his head dubiously. 


444 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘ Better not think about it yet awhile/ my sister is full 
of prejudices. She doesn't want to be thanked. She is 
very fond of this poor girl, and she thinks you have 
cruelly wronged her.' 

' People seem to have made up their minds about that/ 
said Gerard. am not to have the benefit of the 
doubt/ 

^ People have made up their minds that when a lovely 
and innocent girl makes the sacrifice that this poor girl 
has made for you, a man s conscience should constrain 
him to repair the wrong he has done — even though social 
circumstances makes reparation a hard thing to do. But 
in this case difference of caste could have made no barrier. 
Your victim is a lady, and no man need desire more than 
that.' 

‘ There was a barrier,' said Gerard ; ‘ I was bound by a 
promise to a woman who had been constant to me for 
years.' 

‘ But who had not sacrificed herself for you — as this 
poor girl has done. And it was because she was a clever 
hard-headed woman of the world, perhaps, and had kept 
her name unstained, that you wanted to keep your prom- 
ise to her, rather than that other promise — at least im- 
plied — which you gave to the girl who loved you.' 

Gerard was silent. What had he not promised in those 
impassioned hours when love was supreme ? What 
pledges, what vows had he not given his fond victim, in 
that conflict between love and honour ? She had been 
too generous ever to remind him of those passionate 
vows. He had chosen to cheat her, and she had submit- 
ted to be cheated, resigned even to his abandonment of 
her if his happiness were to be found elsewhere. 

The London season had begun, and there were plenty 
of people in town who knew Gerard Hillersdon, people 
who would have been delighted to welcome him back to 
society after his prolonged disappearance from a world 
which he — or any rate his breakfasts and dinners — had 


The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 445 

adorned. But Grerard was careful to let no one know of 
his return to London. The carriage gates of Hillersdon 
House were as closely shut as when the master of the 
house was in Italy, and Mr. Hillersdon's only visitor en- 
tered by a narrow garden door which opened into a 
shabby old-world street at the back of the premises. This 
visitor was Justin Jermyn, the confidant and companion 
whose society was in somewise a necessity to Gerard 
since low health and shattered nerves had made solitude 
impossible. They dined together every night, talked, 
smoked, and idled in a dreamy silence, and played piquet 
for an hour or two after midnight. The money he won 
at cards was the only money that Jermyn had taken 
from his millionaire friend, but as he was an exceptionally 
fine player, Gerard a careless one, and as the stakes were 
high, his winnings made a respectable revenue. 

Gerard found Jermyn waiting for him when he re- 
turned, saddened and disheartened, after his third visit to 
Lowcombe Bectory. Jermyn was sprawling on a sofa in 
the winter garden, with his head deep in a leviathan 
down pillow, and his legs in the air. 

‘There is a letter for you.’ he said, between two lazy 
puffs at a large cigar, ‘a letter from Florence — after Ovid, 
no doubt. Dido to JEneas ! ’ 

* Why didn’t you open it,’ if you were curious ? ’ sneered 
Gerard, ‘ It would be no worse form than to peep and pry 
into the address and postmark.’ 

‘There was no necessity ; you are sure to tell me all 
about it.’ 

‘The letter was from Mrs. Champion, and a thick let- 
ter, that lady scorning such small economy as the lessen- 
ing of postage by the use of foreign paper. 

‘ My dear Gerard, — I think my letter of last night may 
have prepared you in some degree for the letter I find 
myself constrained to write to-day. I might have hesi- 
tated longer, perhaps, had you been still at my side, 
might have trifled with your fate and mine, might have 


446 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil 


allowed myself to drift into a marriage which I am now 
assured could result in happiness neither for you nor me. 
The days are past in which you and I were all in all to 
each other. We are good friends still, shall be good 
friends, I hope, as long as we live; but why should friends 
marry, when they are happy in unfettered friendship V 

‘Your hurried departure makes my task easier; and 
should make the continuation of our friendship easier. 
When we meet again let us meet as friends, and forget 
that we have ever been more than friends. Day by day, 
and hour by hour, since you came to Florence it has been 
made clearer to my mind that we have both changed 
since last year. We are not to blame, Gerard, neither you 
nor I. The glamour has gone out of our lives somehow — 
we are ‘ the same and not the same.’ I have seen coldness 
and despondency in you where all was once warmth and 
hope, and I confess that a coldness in my own heart re- 
sponds to the chill that has come over yours. If we were 
to marry we should be miserable, and sliould perhaps 
come to hate each other before very long. If we are frank 
and straightforward, and true to each other at this crisis 
of our lives we need never be lessened in each other s 
esteem. 

‘I know that I have read your heart as truly as I have 
read my own ; I do not, therefore, appeal to you for par- 
don. My release will be your release. Be as frank with 
me, my dear Gerard, as I have been with you, and send 
me a few friendly lines to assure me of kindly feeling 
toward your ever faithful friend. 

‘ Edith Champion.’ 

A deathlike chill crept through Gerard's veins as he 
read this letter to the end. The release as a release was 
welcome, but the underlying meaning of the letter, the 
feeling which had prompted it, cut him to the quick. 

‘ She saw death in my face that first day at Florence,’ 
he told himself. ‘ I could not mistake her look of horri- 
fied surprise, of repulsion almost, when first I stood un- 


The World, The Flesh, and The DeviL 447 


expectedly before her. She was able to hide her feelings 
afterwards, but in that moment love perished. She saw 
a change in me that changed her at once and for ever. 
I was not the Gerard Hillersdon of whom she had thought 
and for whom she had waited. The man who stood be- 
fore her was a stranger marked for death ; a doomed 
wretch clinging to the hem of her garments to keep him 
from the grave — an embodied misery. Can I wonder that 
her heart changed to the man whom Death had changed V 

He read the letter a second time, slowly and thought- 
fully. Yes, he could read between the lines. He had 
gone to his old love as to a haven from death — a flight 
to sunnier skies, as the swallows fly to Africa. He had 
thought that somehow in that association with vigorous 
vivid life, he would escape out of the jaws of death, re- 
new his half-forgotten boyish love, and with that renewal 
of youthful emotions renew youth itself. He had cheated 
himself with some such hope as this when he turned his 
face towards Florence ; but the woman he had loved, that 
bright embodiment of life and happiness, would have 
none of him. 

Well, it was better so. He was free to pick up the 
broken thread of that nearer, dearer, far more enthralling 
love — if he could. If he could. Can broken threads 
be united ? He thought of^his child — his murdered child 
— murdered by his abandonment of the mother. No act 
of his — no tardy reparation — could bring back that lost 
life. Even if Fate were kind and Hester s health and 
reason were restored, that loss was a loss for ever, and 
would overshadow the mother’s life to the end. 

He knew that he was dying, that for Hester and him 
there could be no second summer .time of happy un- 
reasoning love. The meadow flowers would blossom 
again ; the river would go rippling past lawn and willowy 
bank under the September sun ; but his feet would not 
tread the ripe grasses, his voice would not break the quiet 
of that lonely backwater where Hester and he had 


448 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


dreamt their dream of a world in which there was neither 
past nor future, fear nor care, only ineffable love. 

Jermyn watched him keenly as he walked up and down 
the open space between a bank of vivid tulips and a 
cluster of tall palms. 

‘ Your letter seems to have troubled you, ’ he said at 
last. ‘ Does she scold you for having run away just be- 
fore your wedding ? To-day was to have been the day, by 
the by/ 

‘ No, she is very kind — and very patient. She will wait 
till it suits me to go back/ 

‘ That will be next week, I suppose. You have done all 
you could do at Lowcombe. The Jersey Lily will suit 
you better than this house — delightful as it is, and Spezia 
or Naples will be a safer climate than London in April or 
May. 

^ I am in no hurry to go back — and I doubt if climate 
can make any difference to me/ 

‘ There you are wrong. The air a man breathes is of 
paramount importance.' 

^ I will hear what my doctor says upon that point. In 
the meantime I can vegetate here.' 

He dined with Justin Jermyn. No one else knew that 
he was in London. He had not announced his return even 
to his sister, shrinking with a sense of pain from any 
meeting with that happy young matron, who was so full 
of the earnest realities of life, and who on their last meet- 
ing had asked such searching questions about her lost 
friend Hester, whether there was anything that she or 
her husband could do to find out the secret of her disap- 
pearance. She had reminded her brother that Jack Cum- 
berland was the servant of Him who came to seek and to 
save those that were lost, and that even if Hester's foot- 
steps had wandered away from the right way it was so 
much his duty to find her. Gerard had answered those 
eager questionings as best he might, or had left them un- 
answered, except by vaguest expressions of sympathy ; 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 449 


but he felt that in the present state of things he could 
scarcely endure to hear Hester s name spoken, and that 
the mask must drop if he were called upon to talk about 
his victim. 

Hester s attempted suicide, and the drowning of her 
child had not been made a local scandal, and bandied 
about in the newspapers. The fact was too unimportant 
to attract the attention of a metropolitan reporter, and 
Mr. Gilstone’s wishes had been law to the editors of the 
two Berkshire papers which usually concerned themselves 
with the affairs of Lowcombe and other villages within 
twenty miles of Beading. Gerard’s domestic tragedy had 
therefore been unrecorded by the public Press, even under 
his assumed name. 

The two young men went upstairs after dinner to smoke 
and lounge in the rooms which Gerard had copied from those 
unforgotten chambers in the old inn. Here they usually 
sat of an evening, when they were alone ; and it was here 
that most of the games of piquet had been played, the 
result of which had been to supply Justin Jermyn with a 
comfortable income without impoverishing the less suc- 
cessful player. But to-night Gerard was in no mood for 
piquet. His nerves were strained, and his brain fevered. 
The game which had generally a tranquilising influence, 
to-night only worried him. He threw his cards upon the 
table in a sudden fretfulness. 

‘ It’s no use,’ he said. ‘ I hardly know what I am doing. 
I’ll play no more to-night.’ 

He rose impatiently, and began to walk about the room, 
then stopped abruptly before a Japanese curtain which 
hung against the panelling, under a Turkish yataghan 
and plucked it aside. 

‘ Do you know what that is ? ’ he asked pointing to the 
sheet of drawing paper scrawled with pen and ink lines. 

‘ It looks as if it were meant for an outline map. Your 
idea of Italy, perhaps, or Africa — drawn from memory, 
r.nd not particularly like.’ 


450 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘ It is my peau de chagrin — the talisman that shows the 
shrinking of vital force — vital force meaning life itself, 
and thus marks the swift waste of life, and passage to the 
grave. You see the outer line of all. Tolerably firm and 
free is it not ? Scarcely drawn by the hand of a Hercules, 
yet with no mark of actual feebleness. You see the inner 
lines, each following each, weaker and more irresolute, the 
last tremulous as a signature made on a death bed.’ 

He snatched a pen from the table near him, and dipped 
it in the ink, then made a dash at the chart, and tried to 
follow the outer line with a bolder sweep, but his arm was 
too weak to bear the strain of the upward position, and 
the pen ran down the paper with a single swift descend- 
ing stroke, till it touched the outermost edge, then glanced 
off and dropped from the loosening hand. 

‘ Do you see that,’ he cried, with a burst of hysterical 
laughter, ‘ the line goes down — straight as a falling star 
— down, down, as the life goes down to the grave ? ’ 

‘ Come, come, my dear fellow, this is all womanish non- 
sense,’ said Jermyn, with his smooth somnolent voice, in 
whose sound there was a sense of comfort, as in the fall- 
ing of summer rain. ‘ You are tired. Lie down on this 
delightful sofa, and let me talk you to sleep.’ 

He laid his hand on Gerard’s shoulder with a friendly 
movement, and drew or led him to the capacious old 
Italian sofa, with its covering made of priestly vestments, 
still rich in delicate colouring, despite the sunlight and 
dust of centuries. Brain weary, and weak in body, Gerard 
sank on the luxurions couch, as Endymion on a bed of 
flowers, and the soft, slow music of Jermyn’s voice — talk- 
ing of the yacht, and the harbours where they two were 
to anchor along the shores of the Mediterranean — was 
potent as mandragora or moly. He sank into a delicious 
sleep — the first restful slumber he had known v^ince he 
had left Florence. 

It was ten o’clock when he fell asleep, and it vas past 
eleven when he woke suddenl}^, his mind filled w^th one 
absorbing thought. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 451 


^ My will ! ’ he said ; ‘ I have made no will. If I were to 
die suddenly — and with a weak heart who can tell when 
death my come — I should die intestate. That would be 
horrible. I have settled something — but nob much ; not 
enough/ this to himself, rather than to Jermyn, who sat 
quietly beside the sofa, watching him. ‘ I must make a 
will.' 

No such thought had been in his mind before he fell 
asleep ; no idea of any such necessity. If he had thought 
— as a millionaire must think — of the disposal of his 
money, he h.ad told himself that were he to die intestate 
his father would inherit everything, and that having pro- 
vided for Hester s future by a deed of trust, it mattered 
little whether he made a will or not. A few casual friends 
would be cheated of expected legacies — but that mattered 
little. He had no friend — not even this umbra of his, 
Justin Jermyn — whose disappointment mattered to him. 
But to-night his whole mind was absorbed in the necessity 
of disposing of his fortune. He was fevered with impa- 
tience to get the thing done. 

^ Give me a sheet of that large paper,' he said, pointing 
to his writing table. ‘ I will make my will at once. 
You and a servant can witness it. A holograph will is 
as good as any, and there is no one who could attack my 
will.' 

‘ I hope you won't ask me to witness the document/ 
said Jermyn, laying a quire of large Bath post before 
Gerard, with inkstand and blotter, ‘ for that would mean 
that you are not going to leave me so much as a curio or 
a mourning ring.' 

' True — I must leave you something. I’ll leave you 
your own likeness — the faun yonder,' said Gerard, look- 
ing up at the bust, the laughing lips in marble seeming 
to repeat Jermyn’s broad smile. 

‘ You must leave me something better than that. I 
am as poor as Job, and if I outlive you where will be 
my winnings at piquet ? Leave me the scrapings of your 


452 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


money bags. Make me residuary legatee, after you have 
disposed of your fortune. The phrase will mean very 
little, though it sounds big — but there must be some 
scrapings.’ 

Gerard opened a gold and enamelled casket, a master 
work of the cinque cento goldsmiths, and took out a 
long slip of paper, the schedule of his possessions, a cata- 
logue of stocks and shares, in his own neat penmanship. 
He could see at a glance along this row of figures where 
his wealth lay, and with this slip of paper spread on the 
table before him he began to write. 

To my father, the Reverend Edward Hillersdon, Rector 
of Hehnsleigh, in Consols, so much, in South-Western 
Ordinary Stock — in Great Western — Great Eastern — 
Great Northern, so much, and so much, and so much, till 
he had disposed of the first million, Justin Jermyn stand- 
ing by his side and looking down at him, with his hand 
on his shoulder. 

He wrote no longer in the neat literary hand which 
had once penned a popular love-story, and almost made 
its owner a name in literature. To-night, in his fever 
and hurry of brain his writing sprawled large over the 
page — the first page was covered with the mere pre- 
liminary statement of sound mind, &c., &c., and his father’s 
name. Then came the list of securities, covering three 
other pages — then to my sister Lilian, wife of John 
Cumberland, vicar of St. Lawrence, Soho, and then 
another list of securities — then to my mother, all my 
furniture, pictures, plate, in my house at Knightsbridge> 
with the exception of the marble faun in my study — 
then to my beloved friend, Hester Davenport, fifty thou- 
sand pounds in Consols, and my house and grounds at 
Lowcombe, with all contents thereof — and, finally, to 
Justin Jermyn, whom I appoint residuary legatee, the 
marble faun. One after another, as the pages were fin- 
ished in the large hurried penmanship, Justin Jermyn 
picked them up, and dried them at the wood fire. The 


Tile Worlds The Fleshy and The Devil. 


453 


nights were chilly, though May had begun, and Gerard’s 
sofa had been drawn near the hearth. 

It was on the stroke of midnight when the will was 
ready for signature. 

‘ Kindly ring, J ermyn. My valet will be up, of course, 
and most of the other servants, perhaps, for this is a dis- 
sipated house. I hear them creeping up to bed at mid- 
night very often when I am sitting quietly here. The 
servants’ staircase is at this end of the house.’ 

‘Talking of staircases, you haven’t left Larose so much 
as a curio,’ said Jermyn, as he pressed a bronze knob 
beside the mantelpiece. 

‘ Why should I leave him anything ? He has made 
plenty of money out of this house. Do you think I want 
to give him a pleasant half-hour, when I am in my 
grave ?’ 

‘I thought you liked him.’ 

‘ I like no one, in the face of death,’ answered Gerard, 
fiercely. ‘ Do you think I can love the men whose lives 
are long — who are to go on living and enjoying for the 
greater part of a century, perhaps, to be recorded approv- 
ingly in the ‘ Times ’ obituary, after drinking the wine of 
life for ninety years, “ We regret to announce the death 
of Archdeacon So-and-so, in his eighty -ninth year.” Re- 
grets for a man of eighty-nine ! And you think that I, 
who am doomed to die before I am thirty, can feel very 
kindly towards the long-lived of my species ? Why should 
one man have so much, and I so little ? ’ 

‘ Why should one man be an agricultural labourer with 
fifteen shillings a week for his highest wage, while you 
have two millions ?’ 

‘ Mpney ! Money is nothing ! Life is the only thing 
that is precious. Death is the only thing that is horrible.’ 

‘ True ; and I doubt if the man of ninety is any more 
in love with death than you are at nine-and-twenty.’ 

‘Oh, but he is worn out: he must know that. The 
machine has done its work, and perishes of fair wear and 


454 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


tear. It doesn’t go to pieces suddenly because of a flaw 
in tbe metal. I grant that it is a hideous thought that 
life should end — ever; that this ego, so strong, so distinct, 
so vivid and all absorbing, should go out with a snap 
into unknown daitness ; but to die young, to die before 
wrinkles and gray hairs, to die while life is still fresh 
and beautiful — that is hard. I almost hate my own 
father when I think by how many golden years he may 
survive me, and revel in this wealth that was mine. They 
will make him a bishop, perhaps. Who knows ? A rich 
man must always be a power in the Church. My father 
would make an admirable bishop. He will live as long 
as Martin Routh, I daresay — live on into the new century, 
opulent, portly, benevolent, happy — while I am nothing! 
Oh, think how hard these differences are ! Think of 
Shelley’s heart turned to dust under the stone in the 
Roman graveyard, and Shelley’s friend living for sixty 
years after him, to lie down tired and full of years beside 
him who went out in water and flame, like the spirit he 
was.’ 

Jermyn laid his hands upon him, soothingly, yet with 
something of imperiousness. ‘ Be calm,’ he said, ‘ you 
have to sign these sheets.’ 

The door opened, and the valet whose duty it was to 
answer his master’s bell in the late evening, came quietly 
into the room. 

‘ Are there any of the servants still up ? ’ asked Jer- 
myn. 

‘ Burton has not gone to bed yet, sir.’ 

‘ Then ask Burton to come here with you to witness 
some papers. He is sober enough to remember what he 
does, I suppose ? ’ 

‘Sober, sir ? Yes, sir; I never saw Burton otherwise,’ 
replied the valet with dignity. 

‘ Be quick, then. Your master is waiting.’ 

His master waited very patiently, with fixed and 
dreamy eyes, his hand lying loose upon the first sheet of 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 455 


the will, as Jermyn had placed it before him. Jermyn 
stood at his elbow, holding the other leaves of the will 
in his left hand, while his right rested lightly upon 
Gerard’s shoulder. 

The valet returned, accompanied by the butler, who 
bore an aspect of extreme solemnity, and was careful to 
abstain from speech. 

He stood at attention, breathing brandy, but the pen- 
manship with which he witnessed his master’s signature, 
although laborious, was not altogether illegible. 

The valet signed with a steady hand and a bold front. 
He, too, had been drinking heavily, but he had a more 
delicate taste in liquors than his fellow-servant. 

‘You may as well understand the nature of this docu- 
ment,’ said Jermyn to the witnesses, ‘but it is not legally 
necessary that you should do so. It is your master’s 
will. The only will you have made, I think, Hillersdon,’ 
he added, with his hand still lying upon Gerard’s shoul- 
der, a large hand, with abnormal length of finger, and 
deadly white. 

‘ It is the only will I have made,’ Gerard said slowly. 

‘ Or intend to make.’ 

‘ Or intend to make,’ replied Gerard. 

‘You can go,’ said Jermyn to the men, ‘I am to sleep 
here to-night, by the way.’ 

‘Yes, sir. Your room is ready. I have put out your 
things.’ 

Jermyn had been staying in the house since his return 
from Italy, but in a casual way, and he had daily talked 
of going to his own chambers. He had rooms somewhere 
in the region of Piccadilly, but rarely imparted the secret 
of his address, and had never been known to entertain 
anybody except at a club. Gerard’s single experience 
of his hospitality had been that after-midnight supper in 
the chambers eastward of Lincoln’s Inn. 

‘You are very tired, my dear fellow,’ said Jermyn, 
when the servants were gone. ‘ You had better lie down 
again/ 


456 The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil. 


Gerard rose out of his chair, leaving the loose sheets 
of Bath post lying on the table, without so much as a 
look at them, and Jermyn slipped an arm through his 
and led him back to the sofa, where he sank down with 
closing eyelids, and was deep asleep a few moments later. 

Jermyn took up the loose pages, folded them carefully, 
put them in an inner pocket of his dinner jacket and 
went out of the room. The valet was waiting on the 
landing. 

‘Your master has fallen asleep on the sofa,’ said Jer- 
myn. ‘ He seems very much exhausted, and I think you 
had better let him stay there all night rather than dis- 
turb him. You can put a rug over him and leave him 
there till the morning. He is not ill, only tired. Til look 
in upon him now and then in the night. I’m a very light 
sleeper.’ 

The valet paused, anxious to get to bed, yet doubtful. 

‘ Do you really think he will require nothing, sir ? ’ 

‘ Nothing but sleep. He is thoroughly worn out. A 
long night’s rest will do wonders for him.’ 

The valet submitted to a friendly authority. Mr. 
Jermyn wore his hair very short, had a scientific air, and 
was doubtless half a doctor. The valet went to look at 
his master, and covered him carefully with a soft Indian 
rug. Certainly that deep and peaceful slumber was not 
a slumber to be rudely broken. It was a sleep that 
might mean healing. 

It was ten o’clock next morning before Gerard awoke. 

Mr. Jermyn had gone into the study several times dur- 
ing the night, but at ten he left the house, and it was 
only as the outer door closed upon him that Gerard be- 
gan to stir in his sleep, and presently opened his eyes and 
got up, wondering to see the morning sunlight streaming 
through the Venetian shutters, and making golden bars 
upon the sombre carpet. 

He looked at the clock. Ten, and broad daylight. He 
had slept nine hours, yet with no more consciousness of 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 457 


more than the light and brief slumber of a man who 
throws himself upon his sofa for a casual nap. A sleep 
without dreams — a mere gap in life — that blank and 
idealess slumber which Socrates declared to be the equiv- 
alent of supremest earthly bliss. 

' I never slept so many hours on end in my life/ he 
said to himself, almost appalled at his abnormal slumber. 

He looked about the room, slowly recalling the events 
of yesterday. His journey to Lowcombe, his return to 
town, the letter from Edith Champion. 

He felt in his pocket for the letter. Yes, it was there. 
He read it a third time hurriedly. He wanted to be sure 
that he was a free man. 

‘Free as air/ he told himself, ‘ whistled down the wind 
to prey at fortune. Free to marry the woman I love — 
free to set right her wrongs.’ 

To right her wrongs. Could he bring his drowned 
child back to life' — could he heal the mother s shattered 
brain ? Such wrongs can never be righted. The scar 
they leave is deadly. 

He thought over the words of Edith’s letter, so cold in 
their hard, common sense; and then he recalled his own 
image as he had seen it in the glass that first afternoon 
in the Florentine villa. That face of his, with death 
written upon it, was enough to scare away love. He was 
contemptuous and angry as he thought of that summer- 
time love ; so exacting, so jealous, so insistent, while the 
sun of life and youth rode high in the cloudless heaven ; 
so quick to faint and fall when the shadows fell. 

Of the will made at midnight he had not a moment’s 
thought. Upon that point memory was a blank. Nor 
did he make any inquiry about Jerrnyn. He dressed, 
breakfasted, and was on his way to Low’^combe before 
noon. 

There was no change in the patient, but the doctor 
was not unhopeful. Progress must needs be slow, and it 
was well if there were no retrograde steps. 

CO 


458 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘ Time is now the only healer we can look to/ said Mr. 
Mivor. 

There was a considerable change in the Rector after 
half an hours confidential talk with Gerard ; and Miss 
Gilstone, who had hitherto kept herself out of Mr. Hil- 
lersdon’s way, received him in her drawing-room and 
talked with him for more than an hour, graciously ac- 
cepting his thanks for all her goodness to Hester. 

Be assured I would have done as much for the poor- 
est girl in the parish if her sorrows had appeared to me 
as Hester’s did,’ said Miss Gilstone, ‘ but I don’t mind 
confessing that her beauty and her sweetness have made 
a profound impression upon me. Poor soul, even in her 
worst hours every word she spoke helped to show us the 
gentleness and purity of her nature. I could but think 
of what Ophelia’s brother said of her : 

“ Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, 

She turns to favour and to prettiness,” 

‘ Oh, Mr. Hanley, it would be an awful thought for you 
in after years to have led such a girl astray, and not to 
have made any reparation.’ 

‘ It would have been — it is an awful thought,’ Gerard 
answered dejectedly. ‘ My only desire now is that I may 
live long enough to make her my wife. The day she 
first recognises me, the day she is in her right mind, I am 
ready to marry her. The Rector has asked me to be his 
guest, so that I may know how she progresses hour by 
hour. Shall I be in your way. Miss Gilstone, if I ven- 
ture to accept his invitation ? ’ 

‘ In my way ? No indeed. As if anyone my brother 
likes to ask could ever be in my way. Why, he and I 
have never had two opinions about anything or anybody 
in our lives. We are not like the husbands and wives 
who seldom seem to think alike about the smallest thing. 

‘ Then I may stay ? ’ 

^ Of course you may. Your room is being got ready ; 
and we can put up your servant if you like to bring 
him/ 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


459 


‘ You are too good ; but I have no need of a servant. 
I shall not impose upon your kindness further than by 
my presence/ 

He sauntered in the churchyard with the Rector dur- 
ing the balmy hour before sunset, and in that hour he 
told Mr. Gilstone his name and his history, frankly and 
fully, holding back nothing of folly or selfishness, greed 
of pleasure and greed of wealth. 

‘ Do not think too meanly of me if I confess to having 
envied my rich friends their wealth, at the University 
and in the world. That desire for gold is the sin of the 
age we live in. The air is charged with bullion. All 
life is flavoured with the follies and extravagances of the 
newly rich. Everything is given and forgiven to the 
millionaire. For one Nero, with his Golden House, we 
have Neros by the score, and whole streets of golden 
houses. For one Lucullus we have an army of dinner- 
givers, at whose tables the parasite fattens. It is not 
possible for a young man to live in the stress and turmoil 
of London society and not hanker after gold as the one 
supreme good, and not ache with the pangs of poverty. 
The time came when I meant to blow my brains out, be- 
cause it was better to be dead and dust than alive and 
poor. And on that day of my despair Fortune turned 
her wheel, and behold ! I was a double millionaire. But 
scarcely had I tasted the rapture of wealth before I was 
told my life was not worth two years’ purchase. And 
from that hour to this I have lived with one dark spectre 
always at my elbow.’ 

‘ I have seen so many peaceful death -beds that I can 
hardly realise the fear of death,’ said the Rector, ^ any 
more than I can imagine the fear of sleep.’ 

‘ Ah, but the everlasting sleep, that’s the rub. Not the 
dreams that Hamlet talks about, but the dreamless blank ! 
This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod ! 
To give up everything ! ’ 

‘ Hard indeed, if we had no hopes of fairer worlds.’ 


4G0 The World, The Flesh, and The DevU. 


‘ A hope 1 A mirage, Mr. Gilstone. I can fully under- 
stand that it is your duty, as a minister of the Gospel, to 
hold that mirage before the dying eyes of your parishion- 
ers. But do you mean to tell me, after your long life of 
knowledge and of thought, that the fantastic vision of an 
after- world can be any comfort to you ? Where is the 
link that can unite this dwindling dust below these 
grave-stones with other planets or with future time ? 
New worlds and fairer there may be ; new stars may 
teem with beings of grander frame and nobler minds than 
ours, star after star, in endless evolution, till there be 
worlds peopled with gods; but for me, for you, for this 
dust here, there is nothing more. We have no more ac- 
count in those glories to come than last summer s butter- 
flies have. We have had our day. Do you remember 
how Csesar urged that Catiline and his followers should 
be punished in their lives, not by death, since death is 
only the release from suffering, and beyond death there 
is no place either of joy or sorrow. And you think be- 
cause ninety years after Caesar spoke those words a village 
carpenter, gifted beyond the average of highly gifted 
humanity, codified the purest and the simplest system of 
morals ever revealed to man, and threw out by the way 
hints of a future esistence,and because in after generations 
tradition ascribed to this gifted man a miraculous return 
from death to life — you think because Jesus talked of a 
day of judgment and an after- world, that the stern truths 
of science and fact are to weigh as nothing against those 
vague promises of a rustic teacher.’ 

‘ My dear friend, I will not say that Science has all the 
strong arguments on her side, and that faith can only sit 
with folded hands and wait 

The Shadow, cloaked from head to foot, 

Who keeps the keys of all the creeds.*’ 

but I myself will not attempt to reason you out of these 
dismal views, which the metaphysicians of this age give 
out with as much delight as if they were bringing us new 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


461 


hopes instead of trying to kill the old ones. I will only 
say as St. Paul said, “ If in this life only we have hope 
in Christ we are of all men most miserable.” ' 

‘ St. Paul was a dreamer and an enthusiast ; just the 
right man to make a new religion; an intellectual 
force great enough’ to change the face of Europe, and last 
nineteen hundred years. But I fear that the axe is laid 
to the root of the tree, and that before the twentieth 
century has sped Christianity will be at best a State re- 
ligion — a system of ceremonials and embroidered vest- 
ments, as it was in Pagan, as it is in Papal Rome.’ 

The tranquil monotony of life at Lowcombe Rectory 
was not unpleasant to Grerard. His health was too weak 
for the possibilities of London pleasures. It suited him 
best to spend his days in a dreamy idleness, nursing his 
shrunken stock of vitality as the poor sempstress nurses 
her tiny fire, lest the pitiful half hundred of coal should 
burn too quickly. He was glad to be away from the gay 
world, and from the house whose splendours and luxuries 
had long palled upon him. Here, at least, he had rest. 
Even the rustic simplicity of his surroundings had a sooth- 
ing influence, recalling his childish days in the old par- 
sonage beside the mouth of the Exe. Here he was at 
peace, and here he was able to face the inevitable with 
more resignation than he had felt hitherto. 

He knew that he had not long to live. He had seen Dr. 
South once again since his return to England, and had 
heard the verdict which he meant to be final. He would 
question science no more, since science could do so little 
for him, giving him at most certain rules of dietary, and 
a prescription which any village druggist could make up. 
He had to face a future which might be but a few weeks, 
or which, if he were careful, and Fate and climate were 
kind, might be spun out a good deal longer. 

Here, sauntering by the river on the bright May morn- 
ings, he was able to plan that remnant of life, as it was 
to be spent when Hester was restored to health and rea- 


462 The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 


son, and might go with him where he pleased. He would 
not lose an hour in making her his lawful wife, and then 
he would take her to Spezia as fast as boat and train 
could carry them, and instal her in the luxurious nest 
which had been prepared for another bride. And then 
they would sail away together to the fairest places of the 
earth, and so, death kept at bay to the utmost, should at 
last come upon him with gentlest aspect, and find him in 
his wife's fond arms, her tender hand wiping the last 
dews from his brow, her kisses on his darkening eyelids. 

He revisited some of the old spots where he had 
walked with Hester in the late summer time of last year, 
and these rambles gave him only too just a measure of 
his vanishing strength. The fields over which he had 
trodden so lightly only last September seemed now an 
impossible journey. He was fain to haunt the willowy 
bank between the churchyard and the Rosary, a distance 
of less than a mile. This marked the limit of his power, 
and he had often to rest in the Rosary garden before he 
could attempt the walk back to the Rectory. 

The garden was in perfect order, as in the days when 
Hester had moved about it, ‘ Queen rose of the roses.’ 
Everything was to be kept as it had been under her brief 
tenancy of the house that he had bought for her. She 
might wish to go back there some day, despite all that 
she had suffered within those walls. In any case it was 
her home, and he desired that it should be kept in order 
for her. In all this time he had ignored his own kin- 
dred. His mother and father, Lilian and her husband, 
knew nothing of his return to England. He meant to 
see his sister again, were it only for half-an-hour, before 
he went back to Italy ; but he did not want to see her 
until Hester was his wife, and he could bring sister and 
wife together. He wanted to secure this one faithful 
friend for Hester before he died. At last, after a long 
month of hope and expectancy the happy chance came. 
Hester's wearied brain slowly awakened from its troubled 


The Worldy The Fleshy and The Devil. 463 


sleep, and memory and recognition of familiar faces came 
back one summer morning with the opening of the June 
roses that nodded in at her window. 

‘ Gerard,' she cried, looking up at him affectionately, as 
he stood beside her chair, where he had so often waited 
for the faintest sign of returning memory, ‘you have 
come back from Italy at last. How long you have been 
away. How dreadfully long ! ' 

He sat with her for an hour talking of indifferent 
things. Memory came back gradually. It was not till 
the next day that ^she remembered her father s death, 
and the doctor hoped that the night of her wandering by 
the river, and the loss of her baby, would be blotted out. 
But that was not to be. As her mind recovered its bal- 
ance, the memory of all she had suffered and done in the 
long hours of delirium came back with agonising dis- 
tinctness. She remembered the watchful care of her 
nurses, which had seemed to her a cruel tyranny. She 
remembered creeping out of the house, and through the 
dewy garden in the darkness, and along by the river to 
that favourite spot where she and Gerard had spent so 
many happy hours. She remembered how she had 
thought that death was best for her and for her child, the 
one refuge from a world in which no one loved them or 
wanted them, she a deserted mistress, he a nameless child. 
She remembered the plunge in the darkness, the soft and 
buoyant feeling of the water as it wrapped her round — 
and then no more, except the monotony of quiet days and 
kindly faces, sunlit room, and sweet-scented flowers at 
the Rectory, a time in which she had for the most part 
fancied herself a child again, sinless, happy, full of child- 
ish thoughts. 

They were married in the shadowy old parish church 
at half-past eight o'clock one June morning, Hester, pale 
and wan, but with a delicate loveliness which ill-health 
could not spoil. She was dressed in a plain grey tweed 
gown, and neat little hat, ready for a long journey. Ger- 


464 The Worlds The Flesh, and The Devil. 


ard was flushed and anxious-looking, hollow-eyed and 
hollow-cheeked, and far more nervous than his bride. 

They drove from the church to the station on their way 
to London, charged with many blessings from the Rector 
and his sister, who, with the parish clerk, had alone 
witnessed the ceremony. 

‘ She is fast your wife,’ quoted the Rector, ‘ the finest 
choral service in Westminster Abbey could not make the 
bond any stronger.’ 

Gerard had telegraphed to his sister to meet him at 
luncheon at Hillersdon House, where he and Hester 
arrived between twelve and one. 

He spent the hour before Lilian’s arrival in showing 
Hester his house. 

‘ It is yours now,’ he said, ‘ yours as much as the Ros- 
ary which I bought to be your plaything. It will be 
yours for many a year, I hope, when I am at rest.’ 

She gave him a heart-rending look. Could he think 
that this splendour would comfort her when he was gone 
— or that she could ever cease to think of him and of her 
child — the child her madness had destroyed. She would 
not pain him by one mournful word, on this day above 
all other days, when he had done all that he could do to 
give her back her good name. She went with him from 
room to room, praising his taste, admiring this and that, 
till she came to his sanctum on the upper floor. 

She had scarcely crossed the threshold when she saw 
the faun, and gave a little cry of disgust. 

‘ Mr. Jermyn,’ she said. 

' Only a chance likeness — but a good one ain’t it ? ’ 

‘ Why do you have his likeness in your room ? It is 
an odious face, and he is a hateful man. I cannot under- 
stand how you could ever have chosen such a man for 
your friend.’ 

‘ He has never been my friend, Hester. I have no 
friend but Mr. Gilstone. That old man is the first person 
from whom I have experienced real friendliness since I 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


465 


became a millionaire. Jermyn has been my companion 
— an amusing companion — and I have never found any 
harm in him.’ 

Hester looked at everything with fond interest. It 
was here he had lived before he knew her. It was this 
luxurious nest he had left for his riverside home with 
her. She looked at the books, and the curios on the car- 
ved oak cabinet, bronzes, ivories, jade ; and finally stop- 
ped before a curtain of Japanese embroidery, which hung 
against the panelling. 

‘Is there a picture behind this curtain,’ she asked, ‘a 
picture which no one must look at without permission ? ’ 

‘No, it is not a picture. You may look if you like, 
Hester. I have no secrets from the other half of my 
soul.’ 

Hester drew back the curtain, and saw a large sheet of 
drawing paper, scrawled over with black lines, conspicu- 
ous among them a long downward sweep of the pen, 
thick and blurred. 

‘ What a curious thing, ^ she cried. ‘ What does it mean ? ’ 

‘It is the chart of my life, Hester. The downward 
stroke means the end.’ 

He ripped the sneet off the panel upon which it had 
been neatly fastened with tiny copper nails, and then 
tore it into fragments and flung them into the waste-paper 
basket. 

‘ I am reconciled to the end, Hester,’ he said, softly, as 
she clung to him, hiding her tears upon his shoulder, 
‘ now that you and I are together — will be together to the 
last.’ 

He heard Lilian’s step upon the stair, and in another 
minute she was in the room looking at Hester in glad 
astonishment. 

‘ Hester ! He has found you then, and all is well,’ 
cried Lilian, ‘ but, oh, my poor dear, how pale and wan 
you are looking. Has the world gone so badly with you 
since we met?’ 


466 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


‘Ask her no questions, Lilian, but take her to your 
heart as your sister and my wife/ 

‘ Your wife — since when, Gerard ? ’ 

‘That is a needless question. She is my wife — my 
loved and honoured wife/ 

Lilian looked at him wonderingly for a moment. Yes, 
he was in earnest evidently, and this union of which she 
had never dreamed was an actuality. She turned to 
Hester without a word and kissed her. 

‘ You shall be to me as a sister/ she said, gently, ‘and 
I will not ask you what sorrows have made you so sad 
and pale, or why my brother has kept his marriage a 
secret from me until to-day.’ 

After this they went downstairs to luncheon, a luncheon 
at which but little was eaten, yet which was the happiest 
meal Gerard had shared in for many a day. That shadow 
of the past which darkened Hester s life touched him but 
lightly. For him the future was so brief that the past 
mattered very little. He could not feel any poignant 
regret for the child whose face he had never seen ; for had 
that child lived his part in the young fresh life would 
have been too brief to reckon. The child could have 
never known a father’s love. 

They left for Italy by the evening train, Lilian only 
parting with them at the station, where the two pale 
faces vanished from her view, side by side. One of those 
she fancies she had the faintest hope of. ever seeing again 
in this world. 


The World, The Flesh and The Devil. 467 


EPILOGUE. 

The London season was waning, and Justin Jerrnyn 
was beginning, to talk about taking his cure — of nothing 
particular — in the Pyrenees, when the gossips of those 
favourite literary, artistic, and social clubs, the Sensorium 
and the Heptachord, were interested by a very brief an- 
nouncement in the ‘ Times ’ list of deaths. 

' On July 6th, on board the Jersey Lily, at Corfu, Ger- 
ard Hillersdon, age 29/ 

‘ So that is the end of Hillersdon's wonderful luck,’ 
said Larose, ^and one of the most live-able houses in 
London will come into the market. It is only a year and 
a half since it was finished, and we spent his money like 
water, I can assure you. We could hardly spend it fast 
enough to please him. The sensation was delicious from 
its novelty/ 

‘ What was his luck ? Got a million or so left him for 
picking up an old chap’s umbrella, wasn’t it ? ’ 

‘ No; he saved the old man’s life, and almost missed the 
fortune by not picking up the umbrella/ 

‘ Mr. Jerrnyn loses a useful friend. He was always 
about with Hillersdon. And who gets all the money ? 
Or did Hillersdon contrive to run through it ? ’ 

^ Not he/ said a gentleman of turfy tastes. ‘ He was a 
poor creature, and I don’t believe he ever backed a horse 
from the day he left Oxford Such a man couldn’t spend 
a million, much less two millions. He was the sort of 
fellow who would economise and live upon the interest of 
his money. Those are not the men who make history.’ 

‘ He began his career as a scribbler,’ said some one else. 
' Wrote a sentimental story, and set all the women talk- 
ing about him, and then took to writing for the papers, 
and was in very low water when he came into his mil- 
lions/ 

‘ He ought to h^ve run a theatre,’ said another, 


4G8 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil. 


‘ Not he ! I’he man didn’t know how to spend money. 
He was distinguished in nothing/ 

‘ He gave most delightful breakfasts/ said Larose. 

‘ Yes, to half a dozen fellows who talk fine, like you 
and Reuben Gambier. I say he was a poor creature, ui)ou 
whom good luck was wasted/ 

This was tlie final verdict of the smoking-room. The 
dead man had had his chance and wasted it. 

It was on the same day that Mr. Grafton, of Messrs. 
Grafton and Granberry, Lincoln s Inn Fields, received a 
visitor, who called by appointment, made by telegraph 
that morning. The visitor was Justin Jermyn, whom Mr. 
Grafton had met only once in his life at a dinner given by 
his client, Gerard Hillersdon. 

The solicitor received Mr. Jermyn with grave cordiality ; 
the recent death of an important client demanding an air 
of suppressed mournfulness. 

' Sad news from Gorfu/ said Jermyn. ' You saw the 
announcement in the ‘ Times/ of course ? ’ 

‘ Yes ; but it was not news to me. I had a telegram 
within two hours of the event — which was not unexpect- 
ed. Our client has been slowly fading out of life ever 
since he left England in June. You have not been yacht- 
ing with him, Mr. Jermyn V interrogatively. 

‘No ; I have written to him two or three times offering 
myself for a short cruise. It was I who bought the 
yacht for him, and superintended her fitting out. But 
his replies were brief, and/ with something of his familiar 
laugh, subdued to meet the circumstances, ‘he evidently 
didn’t want me ; but as there was a lady in the case I 
was not offended. Well, he is gone, poor fellow. A bril- 
liant life only too brief. One would rather jog on for a 
dull fourscore, even without his supreme advantages.’ 

There was a pause. Mr. Grafton looked politely anti- 
cipative of he knew not what. And then, as the other 
sat smiling and did not speak, he himself began — 

‘ You may naturally suppose^ that, as a friend of Mr. 


The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


4G9 


Hillersdon’s, you may have been remembered for some 
grateful gift, or even a money legacy,' he said blandly, 
‘but I am sorry to tell you there are no such gifts or 
legacies. Our lamented client died intestate.' 

‘ How do you know that — and so soon ? ' asked Jermyn 
still smiling. 

‘ We have the fact under his own hand, in a letter dated 
only three days before his death. The letter is here,' 
taking it from a brass rack on the table. ‘ I will read you 
the passage.' 

He cleared his throat, sighed, and read as follows : — 

‘ My doctor, who has been hinting at wills and testa- 
ments for the last month, tells me that if I have to make 
a will I must make it without loss of an hour. But I am 
not going to make any will. My fortune will go just 
where I am content that it shall go, and I can trust those 
who will inherit to deal generously with others whom I 
might have named had I brought myself to the horror of 
will-making. I would as soon assist in the making of 
my colEn. I shall leave it to my father to make a suit- 
able acknowledgement^ on my behalf, to you and Mr. 
Cranberry, whose disinterested care of my estate, hum, 
hum, ‘and' hum. ‘ I need read no further.' 

‘No. It is a curious thing that a man should write 
those words who had three months before made a holo- 
graph will, and had it duly witnessed in my presence.' 

‘ When was this ? ' 

‘ On the third of May in this year.' 

‘ You surprise me. Were you one of the witnesses?' 

‘ Certainly not ? ' 

‘ And how did you know of the will ? ' 

‘ I was present when it was made, and it was given in- 
to my possession. I have brought it to you, Mr, Crafton, 
in order that you may do as much for me as you did for 
my lamented friend, Gerard Hillersdon.' 

He handed the lawyer a document which consisted of 
only two sheets of bath post, each sheet in Gerard Hil- 


470 The Worldy The Flesh, and The Devil, 

lersdon’s hand writing, and each sheet duly signed and 
attested. 

The first sheet set forth the nature of the testator's 
possessions, a long list of securities ; the second sheet be- 
queathed these to ‘Justin Jermyn, of 4 Norland Court, 
Piccadilly, whom I appoint my residuary legatee.’ 

‘ That will is good enough to stand, I think, Mr. Graf- 
ton.’ 

‘ An excellent will, although he does not particularise 
half his property.’ 

‘No; but I think the words residuary legatee will 
cover everything.’ 

‘Assuredly. Was he of sound mind when he made this 
will ? ’ 

‘ He was never of unsound mind within my knowledge. 
You had better question the witnesses, his valet and his 
butler, as to his mental condition on the evening of May 
the third.’ 

‘ I will not trouble them, I am sorry for your disappoint- 
ment, Mr. Jermyn, though less sorry than I might have 
been had you a nearer claim on our deceased client. This 
will is waste paper.’ 

‘ How so. You don’t pretend there is any subsequent 
will.’ 

‘ Not unless one was made after the letter I have read 
to you. Your will is rendered invalid by our client’s 
marriage.’ 

‘ His marriage ? ’ 

‘Yes. He was married on the third of June, very 
quietly, at the Parish Church of Lowcombe, Berkshire. 
He kept his marriage dark, I know. There was no an- 
nouncement in the papers. The lady was in poorish cir- 
cumstances, 1 fancy, and the marriage altogether a roman- 
tic affair. She has been with him on his yacht ever 
since.’ 

‘ With him. Yes, I knew that she was with him. But 
his wife ! That’s a fiction,’ 


The World, The Mesh, and The Devils 471 

‘ If it is, one of the most genuine-looking marriage cer- 
tificates I ever handled is a forgery. I have the certificate 
in my possession, sent to me by the clergymen who per- 
formed the ceremony. Mr. Hillersdon having died intes- 
tate, his fortune, real and personal — there was very little 
real property by the way- — will be divided between his 
father and his wife. Your only chance now Mr. Jermyn, 
would be to try and marry the widow.’ 

‘ Thanks for the advice. No, I don’t think I should 
have much chance there. Well, I have lost friend and 
fortune — but I am here, and life is sweet. I am not 
dashed by your news, Mr. Crafton, though it is somewhat 
startling. Good day.’ 

He laughed his gnomish laugh, took up his hat in one 
hand and waved the other to the lawyer, with the light- 
est gesture of adieu, and so vanished, joyous and tranquil 
to the last — a man without conscience and without pas- 
sion. 

And what of Hester, enriched beyond the dreams of 
womanly avarice, but widowed in the morning of her 
life ? Can there be happiness for that lonely heart, 
charged with sad memories ? 

Yes, there is at least the happiness of a life devoted to 
good works, a life divided between the rural quiet of the 
village by the Thames and those crowded alleys and 
shabby slums in which John Cumberland and his young 
wife labour, and in which Hester is their devoted and 
zealous lieutenant. In every scheme for the welfare of 
innocent children, in every effort for the rescue of erring 
women and girls, Hester is an intelligent and willing 
helper. She does not scatter her wealth blindly or 
weakly. She is not caught by flowery language or flat- 
teries addressed to her feminine vanity. She brings brain 
as well as heart to bear upon the business of philanthropy 
and in all her dealing with the poor she has the gift of 
insight, which is second only^ to her gift of sympathy. 

If to help others in their sorrow is to be happy, Hes- 


472 The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, 


ter should attain happiness ; but there are those who see 
upon the fair young face the sign and token of early 
death, and in those meadow paths, and by the river 
where she and Gerard walked in their summer dream of 
a deathless love, it may be that those pathetic eyes of 
hers already see the shadow of the end. 

She brought her husband from the lovely land where 
he died to lay him in Lowcombe Churchyard, and the 
summer sun seldom goes down without glorifying one 
gentle figure, seated or kneeling in the secluded shelter 
of a great yew tree, by Gerard Hillersdon’s grave. 


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pages is quite as striking as the faculty for trenchant characteriza- 
tion and the pungent wit. — Brooklyn Eagle, 

Altogether the book is the most readable collection of stories, 
the freshest and most interesting that has appeared for years.— 
Albany Express, 

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104» XLhC %OVC of a - • By Annie Thomas 

Is the last work from the pen of this popular English writer. The 
book is one of the handsomest which the Lovells have gotten out 
of late, which is saying much, considering the high grade of manu- 
facture which has characterized all their publications of late. 

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t05» 1bOW Came ibe 2)ca^? • By J. Fitzgerald Molloy 

J. Fitzgerald Molloy is known to England much more widely 
than to America, yet the intrinsic merit of his work, and the spirited 
crispness of his style, will soon make warm friends for him on this 
side of the water. How Came He Dead?” No. 105 in Lovell’s 
International Series, is replete with stirring incidents, told in smooth 
and entertaining English. 

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106> UbC \DiC0mtC^6 JSdDC - • By Esme Stuart 

Is a bright and lively novel, full of action and incident, with a plot 
bordering slight'y on the romantic, and with a pretty comedy interest 
that at once suggests a dramatic setting of the story . — Boston Gazette^ 

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107» B t^eyevenP (gentleman - By j. Maclaren Cobban 

J. Maclaren Cobban has issued, through the Lovell publishing 
house, a volume entitled “A Reverend Gentleman” wnich has 
already appeared serially in England. From the same house he 
issued his very successful work entitled Master of His Fate,” 
which met with a wide sale and was much admired for its 
originality. 

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108. IRoteg from tbe ’IRews ’ - - By James Payn 

Few little books furnish so much genuine entertainment, com 
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Mr. Payn’s ‘‘Notes from the ‘ News.’ ” — London Daily News. 

It is just the book to be taken up when one has two or three 
minutes to fill. It is full of good stories and interesting facts. — 
London Speaker. 

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109> XLbC Ikeeper of tbe fteigg - By F. W. Robinson 

“ The Keeper of the Keys ” does not fall behind its numerous 
predecessors. There is plenty of humor in the the book as well as 
pathos. — London Athenceum. 

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It0> ZTbe Scudamores - By F. C. Philips and C. J. Wills 

F. C. Philips, whose “ As in a Looking-glass ” met with so 
large a sale, has recently published, through tne John W. Lovell 
Co., by special arrangement, a work entitled “ The Scudamores,” 
which was written in colaboration with C. J. Wills, with whom he 
was also a joint author of “The Fatal Phryne,” which was one of 
the earliest and best numbers of the International Series. lie has 
also issued by the same house “ Margaret Byng,” which is said to 
be quite up to his usual standard. 

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\\\. TOe Conf eg6ton6 of a THHoman - By Mabel Collins 

The many admirers of Miss Collins’ former works entitled 
“The Blossom and the Fruit,” “The Idyl of the White Lotus,” 
“ Light on the Path,” and “ Through the Gates of Gold,” will wel- 
come this new departure in the line of authorship. 

The author has told this woman’s story so vividly that the 
reader will find difficulty in disassociating its relation from the 
actual existence of the writer. 

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1 1 2> Sowing the HUllnD - - Ly E. Lynn Linton 

It will be read with interest by many, as the descriptions are 
graphic and much of the conversation is smart and sometimes 
brilliant. On the whole, the book is a satisfactory contribution to 
the library of fiction. — Su7iday JVews, Detroit. 

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It 3> % /Hbatl - - By Ada Cambridge 

She gives promise of taking a high place among English 
novelists. The book is bright and unconventional, and there is no 
denying its power . — Albany Argus, • 

Ada Cambridge gives us something to think of in her book 
very differently, no doubt, according to our different natures. 
Herein the book differs from most novels, which avoid all food for 
reflection. The descriptions both of still and active life are true.— • 
London Athenceum, 

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114. /ilbar^aret ■ - • By F. C. Philips 

“Margaret Byng” will find its admirers among the class who 
gave cordial welcome to “As in a Looking-Glass and “Young 
Mr. Ainslie’s Courtship,” former popular works by this author. 
The story opens in a smart little house in South Street Park Lane, 
London, and contains many of the elements wLich united make a 
refreshing romance in w'hich the good are very good and the bad 
are very bad indeed . — Katisas City Journal. 

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115. ffor Qnc anP tbc HiOlorlD - By m. Betham-Edwards 

“ For One and the World” is the latest work from the pen of 
M. Betham-Edwards. This lady has the masterful touch of an 
erudite man, with the keen, intuitive, womanly perceptions of her 
sex. The two combined make her work admirably instructive, 
while never losing their completeness of plot and interest. 

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It6> ]pdncc6g Sunsblne • By Mrs. J. H. Riddeli 

This last novel by this popular authoress, among the recent 
issues in Lovell’s International Series, fully sustains the character 
of this, the most popular series of novels ever published. 

Mrs. Riddell is a very clever woman, and she puts “brains” into 
all her work. “ Princess Sunshine” is full of attractiveness. The 
heroine is charming and the family life of the Gifford’s is capitally 
sketched . — Charleston News. 

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1 1 7^ Sloane Square Scanbal - - By Annie Thomas 

She tells a trivial story very well, and draws men and women 
of the purely conventional sort with considerable skill. — News^ 
Charleston. 

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1 1 XLhc migbt of tbe 3rD mt - - ByH. F. Wood 

An exceedingly interesting story of London life, with strongly 
marked and well drawn characters, and pleasing dialogue, which, 
combined with the interest of a well laid plot, make it one of the 
best of recent novels. 

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\\9. (Slutte Bnotber Stov^ - - By Jean Ingelow 

It is not generally known that Jean Ingelow, whose poetry has 
found an echoing chord in almost every heart among the English- 
speaking race, is still living in England, a delightful, white-haired 
old lady, who is still engaged in literary pursuits. The John W. 
Lovell Co. have issued, by special arrangement with her, a volume 
entitled “ Quite Another Story,” the tone of which is quite in accord 
with her delightful poems, and which must be read to be thor 
oughly appreciated. 

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120. Ibeart of (Boio - - - By L. T. Meade 

Adaptibility and sympathy are two prominent qualities of L. T. 
Meade, the author of this story. — Literary World. 

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121. Z\>C Tlglorb anO Hbc TOIl - By James Payn 

The characters are well drawn, the conversations are vivacious. 
— Literary World. 

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122. Dumps .... By Mrs. Louisa Parr 

A healthy, interesting and well-told story, easy to read and 
belongs to a class of which we find only too few of among the 
novels of the present day. 

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123. Zhc JBIacft :Box /Hburber 

By The Man Who Discovered the Murderer 

A very good detective story, simply and pleasingly told . — Aew 
Bedford Journal. 

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124. XLbC (great /llbtll Street By Adeline Sergeant 

“The Great Mill St. Mystery,” by Adeline Sergeant, is a story 
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ing conversation. — Omaha Excelsior. 

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125. ^Between XlfC anb Death - By Frank Barrett 

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126. IKlame an& jfame 

By Adeline Sergeant and Ewing Lester 

The authors cf ‘‘Name and Fame” have endeavored with 
more success than might have baen expected, to justify a bold step 
across conventional borders. There is a good deal that is readable 
in the book. — London Athenceum^ 

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127. Bramas Of xife • • By George R. Sims 

The man of the London Referee has made himself famous 
for story-telling, both in prose and verse. His name is a guaranty 
of good reading. 

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t2S. %OVCX Ot iFrlCtlD t • By Rosa Nouchette Carey 

Rosa Nouchette Carey cannot be dull if she tries, or, at any 
event, she never tries. Her novels make no pretense to deep pur- 
pose, and “ Lover or Friend ” is a simple love story told with plenty 
of liveliness. — Charleston News, 

CLOTH, $1.00. PAPER COVER, 50 CENTS. 

12^. 5amOU0 or Ifnfamoug • • By Bertha Thomas 

An unusually well told tale with many original ard strongly de- 
fined characters which will place it in the front rank of modern fiction. 

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130. tTbe 1bOU6e of Iballlwell • By Mrs. Henry Wood 

More than one million copies of books by the author of “ East 
Lynne ” have been sold, and this last one from her pen will fully 
keep up the average. 

“ The House of Halliwell ” was written many years ago, but 
never published. It differs somewhat in style from the author s 
subsequent work, but every page bears the unmistakable impress 
of the author of “ East Lynne.” 

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13t> IRu ttt no an^ Qthcv Storicg - - By Ouida 

The workmanship is excellent throughout, and the stories have 
the positive charms of simple grace and pathos. — Manchester 
Examiner, 

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132. JHIag ! - - By Rhoda Broughton 

This most popular author has produced an old-fashioned 
English society novel full of incident and interest. Everyone will 
want to read it a second time. 

The book is charming, full of esprit^ and reveals the master in 
the handling of a theme, which, in other hands, would be hardly 
possible. It is a book that can safely be recommended to lovers of 
good light literature. — Home Journal, 

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133. JBaetl an^ Bnnette • - By B. L. Farjeon 

The title of the Dickens of to-day seems to be very generally 
conceded by the literary critics to Farjeon. His readers cannot 
fail to be impressed with the similarity in characters and style. 

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134. XLbC Bemonlac - - By Walter Besant 

A charming tale of constancy which irresistibly draws out our 
deepest sympathy. One of those perfect pictures of a true woman’s 
love which few can conjure up more cleverly than Mr. Besant. — 
Temperance Record, 

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135. JBrave Ibcart ant) ITrue - By Florence Marryat 

The very name of Marryat seems to have become associated 
with reading matter of strong literary merit. — Journalist. • 

“ Brave Heart and True ” is Florence Marryat’s last and one of 
her best novels. — Denver News, 

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136. - By Geo. Manville Fenn 

A clever and brightly written novel with a refreshing go about 
it. Its sprightliness is a welcome change from the solemnity, 
yearning and dreariness of some much more high-toned and more 
truly tragic tales. — Glasgow Herald, 

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137. /Iftarcla - - • - By W. E. Norris 

Mr. Norris has the light touch of Thackeray, who guides us 
through three or four generations as gracefully as a well-bred man 
might point out the portraits of his ancestors in the family picture 
gallery. — Quarterly Review, 

In portraiture of character and delicate finish of detail, W. E. 
Norris takes high rank among the novelists of the day. — Boston 
Globe, 

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13S. ^HHlormWOOD - • - By Marie Corelli 

A story of absinthe and absintheurs, a grim, realistic drama. — 
Athen(2U7n, 

The reader is whirled about like a leaflet amid lurid flashes 
and wild gusts of maddened invective, almost blinded by the efforts 
he or she makes, to realize the tempest which rages through the 
man possessed of the liquid fire. — Kensington Society, 

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130. Zhc Ibonorable /IRfgg • • ByL,T. Meads 

Delightfully fresh and winning. — Scottsman, 

What we want is a vivid portraiture of character and broad 
and wholesome lessons about life. These Mrs. Meade gives us.— * 
Spectator, 

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140. B fitter ^Irtbtlc^bt - - By Dora Russell 

“It is well written, clever in^ts character drawing, and interest- 
ii'g generally.” — Bostoft Saturday Gazette. 

“ Miss Russell does not disappoint those readers who like 
enough events, jealousies, etc., to make the chapters exciting. — 
Portland Press, 

CLOTH, $1.00 ; PAPER, so CENTS. 

141. E)OUbIC 1knot. - By George Manville Fenn 

“ Mr. Fenn is easily in the front rank of English novelists, and 
there is a freshness and breeziness about his stories that always gain 
for them many and delighted readers.” — Albany Argus, 

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142. B 1b(&5en 5fOC . . . By G. A. Henty 

“ The works of this author are so well known that it is unneces- 
sary to say anything in regard to his reputation which is well 
established. ” — Detroit A dzertiser, 

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143. Ulrttb - By S. Baring-Gould 

“ The author’s wealth of illustration and anecdote is wonder- 
ful.” — Charleston JVews, 

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144. :Broobe’g Daiigbtec - - - By A. Sergeant 

Adeline Sergeant has established for herself an enviable repu- 
tation as the writer of novels which are worth while. Her keen 
insight into human nature, and remarkable easy flow of language in 
depicting the same, has made her one of the most saleable of 
English novelists. 

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145. % /IRInt of /llbonex? - By George Manville Fenn 

Fenn’s novels are all interesting, the characters are original and 
the local coloring is always correct. 

“ Everything Mr. Fenn writes is interesting.” — Pittsburgh Dis- 
patch, 

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LOVELL'S INTERNATIONAL SERI ES— Continued. 


No. Cts. 


90. April’s Lady. “The Duchess” 50 

91. Violet Vyvian, M. F. H. May 

Crommeliu 50 

92. A Woman of the World. F. 

Mabel Kobinson 50 

93. The Baffled Conspirators. 

W.E. Norris 50 

91. Strange Crimes. W. Wesiall 50 
95. Dishonored. Theo. Gift — 50 
90. The Mystery of M. Felix. 

B. L. Farjeon 50 

97. With Essex in Ireland. 

Hon. Emily Lawless 50 

98. Soldiers Three and Other 

Stories. Rudyard Kipling 50 

99. Whose WAS THE Hand? M.E. 

Brad don 50 

100. The Blind Musician. Step- 

niak and William Westall 50 
lul. The House on the Scar. 

Bertha Thomas 50 

102. The Wages of Sin. L. Malet 50 

103. The Phantom ’Rickshaw. 

Rudyard Kipling 50 

104. The Love of a Lady. Annie 

Thomas 50 

105. How Came He Dead? J. 

Fitzgerald Molloy ’. 50 

100. The Vicomte’s Bride. Esme 

Stuart 50 

107. A Reverend Gentleman. 

J. Maclaren Cobban 50 

108. Notes from the ‘News.’ 

James Pay n .50 

109. The Keeper of the Keys. 

F. W. Robinson 50 

110. The Scudamores. F. C. 

Philips and C. J. Wills 50 

111. The Confessions of a 

Woman. Mabel Collins. . 50 

112. Sowing the Wind. E. Lynn 

Linton 50 

114. Margaret Byng. F. C. 

Philips 50 

11.5. For One and the World. 

M. Betham-Ed wards 10 

IIG. Princess Sitnshine Mrs. J. 

11. Riddell 50 

117. Sloane Square Scandal. 

Annie Thomas 50 

118. The Night of the 3d Ult. 

H. F. Wood 50 

119. Quite Another Story. 

Jean Ingelow .50 

120. Heart OF Gold. L T. Meade .50 

121. The Word and the Will. 

James Payn 50 

122. Dumps. Mrs. Louisa Parr.. 5u 
123 The Black Box Murder. 

By the man who discovered 
tlie murderer 50 

124. TiiE Great .Mill St. Mys- 

tery. Adeline Sergeant 50 

125. Between Life and Death. 

Frank Barrett 50 

126. Name and Fame. Adeline 

Sergeant and Ewinjr Lestf^r .50 

127. Dramas OF Life. G. R. Sims .50 j 


No. CtK. 

128. Lover or Friend? Rosa 

Nouchette Carey 50 

129. Famous or Infamous. Ber- 

tha Thomas 50 

130. The House of Halliwell. 

Mrs. Henry Wood .50 

131. Ruffino. Ouida 5o 

132. AlasI Rhoda Broughton. . . 50 

133. Basil and Annette. B. L. 

Farjeon .50 

134. The Demoniac. W. Besant 50 

135. Brave Heart and True. 

Florence Marrvat 50 

136. Lady Maude’s Mania. G. 

Manville Fenn .50 

137. Marcia. W. E. Norris .50 

138. Wormwood. Marie Corelli. 50 

139. The Honorable Miss. L. 

T. Meade 50 

140. A BitterBirthright. Dora 

Russell .50 

141. A Double Knot. G. M Fenn .50 

142. A Hidden Foe. G. A Henty .50 

143. Urith. S. Bari rig Gouid. . . 50 

144. Brooke's Daughter. By 

Adeline Sergeant 50 

14.5. A Mint OF Money.. George 

Manville Fenn 50 

146. A LOST Illusion. By Leslie 

Keith 50 

147. Forestalled. By M. Beth- 

am-Edwards 50 

148. The Risen Dead. By Flor- 

ence Marry at .’ 50 

149. The Roll of Honor. By 

Annie Thomas *. 50 

150. A Baffling Quest. By 

Richard Dowling 50 

151. The Laird o’ CocIvPEN. By 

‘ Rita ’ .50 

152. A Life for a Love. By L. 

T Meade • • • • . 

153. Mine Own People. By 

Rudyard Kipiing *. .50 


154. Eight Days. By R. E: Forrest .50 

WILL SHORTLY APPEAR. 


1.55. The Heart of a Maid. By 

Beatrice Kipling " 50 

1.56. The Heir Presumptive and 

Heir Apparent. By Mrs. 
Oliphaut 50 

1 .57. In the H ea rt of the Storm . 

By Maxwell Gray’^ 50 

158. An Old Maid’s Love. By 

Maarten Maartens 50 

1.59. There Is No Death. By 

Florence Marry at 5)0 

160. The Soul of Countess 

Adrian. By Mrs. Camp- 
bell-Praed .50 

161. For the Defense. By B. 

L. Farjeon 50 

162. Sunny Stories and Some 

Shady Ones. By J. Payne 50 
16.3. Eric Brighteyes. H. Kider 

Haggard 50 



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station Sixth Avenue Elevated Road 
within half a block. The Hotel is abso- 
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F. A. Hammond. 



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FOR TRANSIENT GUESTS, 

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Patrons of the Murray Hill Hotel have 
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LOVELL DWnOND SISLES 



$85 Strictly High Grade 


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LIVE AGENTS WANTED. SEND FOR FULL PARTICULARS. 


Send 6c. in Stamps for 1 00 Page Illustrated Sporting Goods Catalogue 









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